Liz Cheney Says Evidence Shows Trump and Others Knew Plan to Overturn 2020 Election Was Illegal

Tom Williams/getty Rep. Liz Cheney

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican on the bipartisan congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year, says that evidence indicates former President Donald Trump and his circle broke the law in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.

"It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway," Cheney told CNN's Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday.

The claim echoes what U.S. District Judge David Carter said in a filing last month: that Trump knew allegations of voter fraud were "baseless" but used them as a justification for a plan that would allow his presidency to continue for a second term.

"I think you certainly saw that in the decision that was issued by Judge Carter a few weeks ago, where he concluded that it was more likely than not that the president of the United States was engaged in criminal activity," Cheney told Tapper in her interview, before offering a glimpse at the narrative coming into focus for investigators.

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"What we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election," she said, noting that court documents show "in really chilling detail" how far Trump and his supporters were willing to go to keep Joe Biden out of the White House.

Trump has long insisted that the House of Representatives committee's investigation of him and his behavior around the Capitol riots — including his continued false claims about the election — were politically motivated and he has done nothing wrong.

Not so said Cheney, a vocal member of the GOP's anti-Trump minority.

Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images Donald Trump

"They knew that they were going to attempt to use violence [at the Capitol] to try to stop the transfer of power," she told Tapper on Sunday. "That is the definition of an insurrection."

Though she cited Judge Carter's filing and other records available to the public, Cheney said her committee — which has conducted interviews with senior Trump administration officials, including the president's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner — has also gathered "a tremendous amount of testimony and documents that I think very, very clearly demonstrate the extent of the planning and the organization and the objective."

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"The objective was absolutely to try to stop the count of electoral votes, to try to interfere with that official proceeding," she told Tapper. "And it's absolutely clear that they knew what they were doing was wrong, they knew that it was unlawful, and they did it anyway."

Samuel Corum/Getty The attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021

The New York Times reported Sunday that the Jan. 6 committee has concluded that it holds sufficient evidence to make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding Trump, who has repeatedly acknowledged the larger plan to stop Congress from siding with Biden, citing his false claims of voter fraud.

But the Times also reported that the committee was divided on whether to make a recommendation given political sensitivity and the Justice Department's own widening investigation. (A spokesman for the committee did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.)

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Cheney told Tapper there was "not really a dispute" among committee members but elaborated on why the decision about sending their findings to the Justice Department was complicated.

"Some people feel like a referral, which actually has no legal weight, would only taint the process under which Attorney General Merrick Garland might act," she told Tapper. "Some feel that that's the wrong argument, that right is right, and the committee has the evidence it has."

Cheney didn't answer Tapper's question about which side of the debate she's on, instead repeating her assessment that "there's not really a dispute on the committee" and praising its work on the investigation.

"The committee is working in a really collaborative way to discuss these issues, as we are with all of the issues we're addressing," she said, adding, "I think that it is the single most collaborative committee on which I have ever served. I'm very proud of the bipartisan way in which we're operating. And I'm confident that we will work to come to agreement on all of the issues that we're facing."