- Liz Cheney made up her mind about impeaching Trump while fleeing from rioters on January 6, 2021.
- She told Rep. Tom Malinowski that she wanted to "impeach the son of the bitch," which took him by surprise, per a new book.
- She also pressed McConnell to get Republican senators to halt their objections to the 2020 election results.
As she hid with other lawmakers from a band of pro-Trump rioters on January 6, 2021, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney quickly made up her mind about impeaching former President Donald Trump.
According to "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," a forthcoming book from The New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, Cheney made her position clear to Democratic lawmakers while holed up in the Ways and Means Committee Room as the Capitol was under siege.
After fleeing the compromised House chamber, Cheney connected with Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey.
"The moment it is safe to go back, we've got to get back in that chamber," Malinowski reportedly told Cheney as they waited out the ongoing attack in the Longworth House Office Building.
"Yeah," she responded. "And impeach the son of a bitch."
According to the book, Malinowski was taken aback by Cheney's declaration given their respective party affiliations. She also relayed that sentiment to House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who was similarly surprised.
Cheney told Jeffries that she was going run impeachment charges by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell because he also believed Trump should face punishment for the riot.
At the same time, Cheney was pressing McConnell to get a group of Republican senators who planned to object to Pennsylvania's and Arizona's electoral votes — Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas being chief among them — to stand down.
"Are they going to stop their objections?" Cheney asked McConnell, who was pushing those senators to do exactly that.
As Burns and Martin have also reported, McConnell believed that Trump had committed impeachable conduct on January 6, only to later relent from that position when it became clear that his caucus wouldn't back him up.
Cheney, by contrast, quickly declared publicly that she would impeach Trump, later voting to do so and eventually losing her position atop the House Republican Caucus as a result.