OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A Wyoming lawyer seeking to unseat GOP Rep. Liz Cheney who already has the backing and support of former President Donald Trump lashed out at her 2022 primary opponent in a recent interview.
Harriet Hageman told Just the News that Cheney appears to be more concerned about military bases in Virginia than she does about Wyoming’s energy and natural resources, as evidenced by Cheney’s decision earlier this year to drop her assignment on the House Natural Resources Committee, where she had served since 2017, and spend more time with the House Armed Services Committee and being the co-chair of the partisan Jan. 6 Committee, where she and retiring Rep. Adam Kinzinger, another Trump critic, are the only two Republicans.
Just the News notes: “The messaging is unmistakable: Cheney is essentially a Wyoming carpetbagger more aligned with the interests of Virginia, where she lives in the Washington suburbs when Congress is in session.”
“The fact is that Liz Cheney broke from Wyoming, well, over a year ago,” Hageman said in an interview last week with the John Solomon Reports podcast. “We believe very strongly in Wyoming in the America first agenda, the Wyoming first agenda, energy independence, and being able to … manage and use our natural resources.
“We do not have a representative on the Natural Resource Committee, because Liz Cheney chose to go on the Armed Services Committee. And while that may benefit Virginia, it doesn’t do a doggone thing for the state of Wyoming,” Hageman continued.
Just the News adds:
Hageman, a lawyer whose work has supported the mining, ranching and energy interests in her state, cited as a consequence a recent bill that passed the House Natural Resources Committee that imposes new regulations and fees. …
Both women running for the GOP nomination hail from Wyoming royalty. Cheney’s father held the same seat she does during the 1980s, before becoming defense secretary and vice president during the Bush dynasty.
Hageman’s father was a longtime state representative with deep ties to the natural resources industries (energy, mining and ranchers) that make Wyoming click.
But Liz Cheney quickly fell out of favor, first by voting for President Trump’s second impeachment (he was acquitted), then agreeing to join the Jan. 6 committee after other Republicans were refused a seat on the panel investigating the Capitol riots.
Regarding the legislation passed out of the Natural Resources Committee, it “is designed to do is just to destroy our mining industry in Wyoming,” she said.
“Wyoming had no representative on that committee, because Liz Cheney chose not to serve on the all-important natural resource committee, because she wanted to be on a committee that would benefit Virginia where she lives.”
After Cheney began to attack Trump following the Jan. 6 riot and then voted to impeach him a second time, she fell out of favor with the vast majority of her GOP caucus, which voted to remove her as chair of the House Republican Caucus, the chamber’s No. 3 position within the party. And over the summer, one survey found that as the state’s lone congresswoman, she only garnered 23 percent support from Wyoming voters for reelection.
And to that point, Hageman believes that Wyoming residents who overwhelmingly vote Republican (70 percent of the state’s 600,000 or so residents supported Trump in 2020) will agree with her characterization of Cheney as a creature of the D.C. swamp.
Hageman, in the meantime, is continuing to do legal work.
“This is all about liberty and freedom,” Hageman she said of her work as co-counsel on a lawsuit filed by federal workers who survived COVID-19 and have natural immunity and who are pushing back on Biden’s vaccine mandate.
“And it’s about government overreach. And it’s about the federal government simply has no police power to impose these kinds of mandates on our citizens, whether they are federal employees or not,” she told the outlet.
