Congresswoman Liz Cheney said Donald Trump’s unwillingness to leave the White House after being defeated in the 2020 presidential election "affirms the reality of the danger" of his efforts to overturn the election.
Ms Cheney made the remarks in response to revelations made in a new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, which claimed that the former president told his aides that he would remain in the White House even after Joe Biden's inauguration.
According to Ms Haberman's soon-to-be-released book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the 45th president reportedly told his aides: "I’m just not going to leave."
“We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?"
Ms Cheney, who is one of the two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots, said that it wasn't "surprising that those are the sentiments that he reportedly expressed."
"In a lot of way people say it wasn't as dangerous as it really was," she told CNN on Monday.
"And when you hear something like that, I think you have to recognise that we were in no man’s land and territory we’d never been in before as a nation.
“And if you have a president who’s refusing to leave the White House, or who’s saying he refuses to leave the White House, then anyone who sort of stands aside and says someone else will handle it is themselves putting the nation at risk, because it’s clear that, when you’re at a moment that we faced, everyone’s got to stand up and take responsibility,” Ms Cheney said.
“I think, again, it just affirms, affirms the reality of the danger.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department investigating the riots has issued 40 grand jury subpoenas to Mr Trump’s aides and advisers over the last week.
The subpoenas, which were issued as part of a secret grand jury investigation into Mr Trump’s push to stay in the White House despite losing the election, have also targeted people who’ve remained close to him since his term ended on 20 January 2021, including his longtime social media guru Daniel Scavino.
