Liz Cheney Tells Maddow She ‘Ran To The Capitol’ After Secretly Listening In To Trump WH Call Plotting On Jan 4
Former Congresswoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow she “ran to the Capitol” after an alarming Jan. 4, 2021, Trump White Houe call plotting to overturn the election — which she secretly listened in on.
Cheney is currently on a media tour to promote her book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and A Warning” — which got a big soft-launch when CNN dropped bomb after bomb from an advance copy they obtained exclusively from Cheney.
Cheney was a guest on Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show for an extensive interview, during which Maddow led by asking about one of those newsworthy bombs — that Jan. 4 phone call between the Trump White House, Trump surrogates, and an on-the-down-low Cheney.
The author said she was so alarmed, she went straight to — the parliamentarian:
MADDOW: Let me ask you about a moment in your book that happened on January 4th. That’s described in chapter nine of your book. And you describe listening in on a call in which Trump lawyers are briefing what we call surrogates. That’s basically people that are going to go on TV and talk about the pro-Trump side of things.
CHENEY: Yeah.
MADDOW: And on that call law — Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis describes what they’re envisioning for January 6th. She says — the way you write it is — in the scenario Ellis described, when Pence was presiding, he could either refuse to open or refuse to count the electoral votes.
They don’t necessarily know you’re on this call. You’re listening in —
CHENEY: Right.
MADDOW: — just two days before January 6th.
Was that the moment when it really became clear to you in detail what they were going to try to do?
CHENEY: Yes. You know, I had heard. Obviously, there had been talk about we’re going to have these electors meet. I think Stephen Miller had been talking about that.
But it wasn’t clear to me what the contours of this particular part of the plan were until I dialed into that phone call. And listening to them describe how these fake electors were going to be used and the fact that they anticipated that Vice President Pence was going to use them to refuse to count the legitimate electors was certainly a moment of — of intense concern.
And as I got off that call, I ran into the Capitol, into the office of the parliamentarian of the House to say, you know, wait a minute, this is what I’m hearing is going to happen. What do we do about it in the joint session? How do we stop this?
And it was very clear that there were not a lot of good answers to that because I knew — I learned later through the investigation that Vice President Pence and his counsel were having discussions with the Senate parliamentarian and that the vice president, you know, ultimately, of course, did his duty bravely.
MADDOW: Uh-huh.
CHENEY: But if you’re in a joint session of Congress, you know, you’re not in a position where there are a lot of legislative steps that you can take except to basically move to adjourn. So it was a very dangerous and chilling moment.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.
