Cheney: Johnson is a ‘collaborator’ in effort to overturn 2020 election

Former Rep. Liz Cheney on Saturday called Speaker Mike Johnson a "collaborator" in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.

In an excerpted interview posted to social media, CBS’ John Dickerson asked Cheney: “The speaker of the House is a collaborator to overthrow the last election?”

“Absolutely,” she said.

“If you look at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself. He has to have collaborators. And the story of Mike Johnson is a story of a collaborator,” Cheney said.

In 2021, as Congress prepared to certify the election results, Johnson urged his colleagues to join him in opposing the results. He was a key voice in shaping the legal arguments denying the results of the 2020 election, and led efforts in Congress to support a Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate the election results of four other states.

Cheney was the top Republican on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and has been outspoken about her belief that the former president was responsible for the violence that occurred that day.

After chairing the Republican conference for several years, Cheney’s standing in the party suffered deeply over her vocal criticism of Trump. In 2022, she lost her reelection bid for her Wyoming seat.