Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is the latest high-profile Republican to say Rep. Liz Cheney needs to leave her Republican leadership position.
Jordan follows Rep. Andy Biggs, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, in denouncing Cheney’s decision to vote to impeach President Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 siege of Capitol Hill. Cheney, Wyoming’s lone House member, is the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, making her the No. 3 in the GOP leadership hierarchy.
Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced on Tuesday that she would support the House Democrats’ impeachment of Trump on Wednesday.
“I think she’s totally wrong. I think there should be a conference and have a second vote on [her leadership post],” Jordan said.
Jordan confirmed that the majority of Freedom Caucus members felt the same way that he and Biggs did and want to see Cheney step down.
However, according to the House Republican Conference rules, there is no mechanism to remove a leader from his or her position unless that person is expelled from the conference.
Still, Biggs and Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana are circulating a petition among the GOP conference seeking signatures for a letter and resolution calling for Cheney’s resignation as conference chairwoman, a GOP staffer told the Washington Examiner.
The text of the resolution, shown in an email obtained by the Washington Examiner, said that “Cheney’s condemnation of President Trump and her support for President Trump’s impeachment have been used multiple times by Democrats as justification for a truncated impeachment process that denies the President due process” and that “Cheney’s personal position on issues does not reflect that of the majority of the Republican Conference and has brought the Conference into disrepute and produced discord.”
Cheney slammed Trump in a statement for his handling of the Capitol Hill attack that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police officer.
“Much more will become clear in the coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough,” she said. “The President of the United States summoned this mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”
Cheney is one of five House Republicans supporting Trump’s impeachment.
“She should resign her position as a conference chair and should not be serving this conference. That’s it,” Biggs, an Arizona Republican, told the Washington Examiner.
He later told Fox News that there is a “groundswell” of Republicans who reacted the same way to Cheney’s statement.
Montana Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale also announced that he wants Cheney to step down.
