Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming broke with the Republican Party on Wednesday to say she plans to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in November.
“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this,” Cheney said at an event hosted by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy in North Carolina. “And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
Cheney, who was once the No. 3 Republican in the House, voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, saying at the time that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” Republicans subsequently ousted her from her role as chair of the House Republican Conference in May 2021 because she continued to challenge Trump over his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, was appointed in 2021 to the House Select Committee investing the Jan. 6 attack, where she served as vice chair. In August 2022, she was ousted in a primary by a Trump-endorsed Republican challenger, losing the seat by a wide margin.
Trump has been critical of Cheney for years. In July, he shared another user’s post on his social media platform, Truth Social, claiming that Cheney was guilty of treason. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS,” the post read.
In her remarks at Duke on Wednesday, Cheney emphasized that she does not believe voters have the “luxury” of supporting write-in candidates to stop Trump.
“Because we are here in North Carolina, I think it is crucially important for people to recognize, not only is what I’ve just said about the danger that Trump poses, something that should prevent people from voting for him,” she said. But I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’s names, particularly in swing states.”
This is developing story that will update.