Liz Cheney – third 2024 candidate?

Rep. Liz Cheney (RINO-Wyo.-At-large) has all but declared herself as the “third candidate” for President in 2024. That assumes, of course, that the Democrats don’t nominate her themselves. And she is using a distinctly anti-Republican take on the Trump Raid to build “third way” credentials.

Latest on the Trump Raid

As Attorney General Merrick Garland requested, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida unsealed the Trump warrant. The warrant, and the “property list” of property the FBI seized, are shown below.

That warrant turns out to be as close to a writ of assistance (a general, look anywhere and everywhere for anything and everything warrant) as any magistrate judge has ever issued. It lets the FBI search:

• Trump’s office at Mar-A-Lago,
• Any and all storage rooms, and
• Any other room accessible to Trump and his family and staff where one might store boxes.

It specifically excludes those parts of Mar-A-Lago that other club members, renters, or hotel guests use or stay in.

To reply to Glenn Beck’s point, that warrant says nothing about bringing in a safecracker to enter a safe. And whether that warrant covers Melania Trump’s closet is certainly an open question.

Footage of the search will be available to Trump, should he decide to countersue or move to exclude evidence. Lawyer Christina Bobb made clear that the surveillance system was disabled “only … for a very short … time.” Then Trump’s legal team instructed the household staff to reactivate the system.

Bobb said that Trump and his family could have watched the whole event on closed-circuit television from Trump’s Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan.

Fox News anchor Jesse Watters interviewed Lindsey Halligan, another Trump lawyer, who gave further details. Her statement echoes Trump’s statements about events before the raid.

About that nuclear weapons canard

As CNAV reported yesterday, The Washington Post charged that the FBI were looking for information relevant to nuclear weapons. First, neither warrant nor property list ever uses the word “nuclear” or “weapon(s).” Second, Trump brought up his predecessor, Barack H. Obama, apparently removing thirty million pages of documents when he left the White House.

In reply, the National Archives and Records Administration made an incredible statement to the effect that they removed those records to a building they controlled. The statement gives no addresses for the “NARA facilities” in Chicago or Washington, D.C. Has NARA claimed ownership of a house or storage building that Barack Obama in fact owns? Without any addresses, no one can test the veracity of NARA’s truth claim.

Concerning allegations that Trump mishandled or stole classified information, reporter Catherine Herridge – of CBS News, no less – offered this picture of a Presidential memo, dated January 19, 2021, specifically declassifying all Crossfire Hurricane documents.

Again, CNAV has been over this before. Townhall.com also asks why the FBI waited eighteen months to raid Mar-A-Lago if they knew Trump had nuclear code secrets?

To further show the American political divide, consider these tweets by “blue checkmark” Twitter users, saying Trump just admitted his guilt.

In contrast, Ben Shapiro suggested that the FBI’s “confidential informant” could be Christopher Steele, Agent Whatever-number of MI-6, who compiled the infamous dossier suggesting Trump was a Russian asset.

Liz Cheney apologizes for the FBI

We now come to Liz Cheney, who, in the middle of all this, chose to apologize for the FBI.

I have been ashamed to hear members of my party attacking the integrity of the FBI agents involved with the recent Mar-a-Lago search. These are sickening comments that put the lives of patriotic public servants at risk.

As CNAV has said before: no “patriotic public servant” orders people to treat a former President like a gangster. Which is what Merrick Garland boasted of doing. Now Liz Cheney has as much as said that Donald J. Trump is no better than Al Capone. Or perhaps Juan Perón, late President of Argentina.

Worse, on August 7, Liz Cheney said she prefers Democrats to patriotic, non-establishment Republicans.

Now two House Democrats, Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.-7th) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.-3rd), have cut ads for Liz Cheney. An outfit calling itself Wyomingites Defending Freedom and Democracy commissioned them. They claim to have taken in $475,000 year-to-date in 2022.

Once again, these are not the actions of someone trying to win a primary in a State Trump carried with 70 percent of the vote. Nor would they be the actions of one seriously trying to win the Republican nomination for President in 2024. But they are the actions of one running for President in 2024 on the Democratic ticket. Or failing that, they suit someone trying to be the “third candidate” for President.

Liz Cheney will lose her primary

Primary Day in Wyoming will take place on August 16. No one expects Liz Cheney even to have a chance of winning her primary. Harriet Hageman, her strongest opponent, leads her by at least 26 percent on average. A recent University of Wyoming poll has Hageman leading 57 percent to 28 percent. That’s a 29 percent lead and also makes Hageman the runaway, overwhelming, majority-vote favorite.

The history of “third candidates” for President is not promising. George C. Wallace, last of the unapologetic Democratic Party segregationists, tried it in 1968 after Democrats embraced integration. H. Ross Perot tried it in 1992. Not only did those candidates lose; they failed to carry a single State.

For those reasons, CNAV holds that if Liz Cheney seriously thinks she can win a Republican primary and caucus race for President in 2024, then she deludes herself. On the other hand, CNAV has seen no reason to suppose that Liz Cheney harbors such a delusion. But does she have a delusion of a different kind? Does she really expect to carry any State in a Trump-Biden rematch, or a Trump-Hillary rematch, or a Trump-Harris match?

She is far more likely to be building a machine to enter the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination race. Malinowski and Phillips could be only the beginning. Midterms will shatter the far-left hold on government. So Liz Cheney might be trying to repeat the victories of Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 1992.

Demography is destiny – but not as the Left thinks

But will America have any truck with “moderate politics” anymore? No. The “mushy middle” could never hold, once the debate between freedom and slavery became stark. An ideological war rages between those who want to be free, and those who want other people to be slaves. Liz Cheney has clearly chosen the slavery side, by waging war against the one true champion of freedom. And when she sides with a Bureau that acts like the Gestapo or the Stasi or the Third Chief Directorate of the KGB, Liz Cheney breaks faith with everyone who values his freedom. And also with the Constitution, which she swore to “support and defend … against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

In closing, let us remember what then-Senator Barry M. Goldwater (R-Ariz.) said in 1964:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.