Two investigative reporters with Just the News, founder John Solomon and Aaron Kliegman, have blown the whistle on Liz Cheney: Her husband, Philip Perry, is a partner in a law firm that does business with Chinese companies that are on the United States’ watch list.
That’s bad enough, but back in September Cheney commented on a report — the China Task Force — that warned against doing business with those companies. She said:
It’s very important for everyone to note that we are in the midst of a battle between freedom and totalitarianism. The question we all face is whether the United States and our allies will set the rules of the road into the future, or whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) … will set the rules of the road.
Her husband is very familiar with that road, working for a firm that has long had ties with Chinese companies TenCent and Alibaba, known to be tied directly into the CCP.
Naturally, when Perry was asked if he had dealt directly with any of the companies his wife was regaling against, he said no. But as a partner in Latham & Watkins (LW) he enjoyed sharing the profits of the firm which last year amounted to more than $4 million per partner.
Wrote Solomon and Kliegman:
Perry’s firm’s work for Chinese entities and countries whose human rights abuses and authoritarian rule have troubled the U.S. for years seems to conflict with his wife’s frequent calls for America to stand up to autocratic regimes like China.
The dynamic is one familiar to longtime observers of Washington, D.C.: a power couple calling out the very behavior from which they benefit.
That “dynamic” is hypocrisy, as noted by Cheney’s Republican opponent in the party’s August primary, Harriet Hageman: “This is exactly the problem with Washington, D.C.,” she said on a podcast with Solomon on Wednesday.
That sort of hypocrisy hasn’t been going down well with Wyoming Republicans. Late last year the state’s Republican Party disowned Cheney, and last weekend the Republican National Committee voted to censure her for accepting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to sit on the committee conducting the January 6 inquisition.
Cheney didn’t attend the RNC gathering in Salt Lake City on February 5, but RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel did, and explained to The Hill the reason for the censure:
Liz Cheney and [fellow Republican committee member] Adam Kinzinger crossed a line. They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.
That’s why Republican National Committee members and myself overwhelmingly support this resolution.
Cheney, for her part, couldn’t care less. In an article titled, “Where’s Liz Cheney? The Wyoming Republican’s Exile from Wyoming Republicans,” the New York Times noted that she hasn’t visited the state for an official function in person in years:
Ms. Cheney hasn’t appeared at a state Republican Party function in more than two years and hasn’t been to an in-person event for any of the party’s 23 county chapters since 2020.
Her vote to impeach Mr. Trump last January and her decision to take part in the House investigation of the attack on the Capitol on January 6 have forced her into a kind of exile from Wyoming’s Republican Party apparatus.
It’s no wonder. Cheney has nothing good to say about them: “I’m not going to convince the crazies and I reject the crazies.”
The feeling is mutual. In January, a poll found that primary voters reject her by a 2:1 margin.
