Barring a miracle on her behalf, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming will soon become a lame duck.
Cheney is one of two token anti-Donald Trump Republicans on the Democrats’ Jan. 6 kangaroo kommittee in the House. The other, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, had the self-awareness not to seek another term.
On Tuesday, Wyoming voters will make Cheney aware of how they feel about her. The polls provide a bit of a spoiler alert: The latest survey has her down by 29 points to Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman, and the margin has been widening.
However, if Cheney is worried about money matters, she should cheer up. Her husband’s law firm has been given the gift that keeps on giving: Hunter Biden’s patronage.
As the New York Post noted on Saturday, Cheney’s husband, Philip Perry, is a partner at a firm representing President Joe Biden’s wayward son as the Department of Justice probes his “tax issues” — just one degree of separation from a case that could have dramatic effects on the November midterms and 2024 presidential election.
“Philip Perry has worked at Latham & Watkins since 2007, and focuses on white collar cases, commercial and Supreme Court litigation, according to his company biography,” the Post reported.
“Another Latham partner, Chris Clark, has been representing Hunter Biden since December 2020 — but Cheney’s husband’s involvement at the firm had not been previously known.”
This isn’t entirely accurate — although it’s worth noting the media has been slow at putting two and two together on this.
In February 2021, Axios reported that Hunter had hired Latham & Watkins to represent him in December 2020. In February of this year, Just the News made the connection, noting “Liz Cheney’s Hunter Biden problem.”
The issue seems to have gotten traction in the final days of the Wyoming GOP primary campaign, however, after conservative outlet The Federalist picked it up last week.
Philip Perry (Liz Cheney’s husband) is a partner at same firm that Hunter’s lawyer is partner at. Meaning, Liz Cheney’s husband is making money from Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/FnIHtI1BH5
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 5, 2022
According to the Post, Clark’s profile at the firm’s website prominently mentions that he’s been representing Hunter Biden in a “grand jury investigation regarding tax issues.” I’m not quite sure why that would be considered a feather in a litigator’s cap, although I’ll concede the fact that Hunter has yet to face any serious charges for his behavior is a minor miracle. (As Breitbart noted, the president’s son is also under investigation for potentially lying on a federal firearm purchase form, although it’s unclear if anyone at Latham & Watkins is representing him for this.)
Then again, perhaps this minor miracle has nothing to do with Clark himself. Consider this error-splattered email from the lawyer to a reporter for the U.K.’s Daily Mail when he was asked for comment on a different Hunter-related matter:
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this was Hunter’s lawyer’s response when I asked him for comment: pic.twitter.com/BSTsoukXOs
— Josh Boswell (@JoshTBoswell) August 5, 2022
I hope someone else is typing up his court documents.
Poor spelling and grammar from one of its partners aside, though, Latham & Watkins is considered a “Democratic powerhouse,” according to the Post, with its employees ponying up more than half a million dollars to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Will Hunter Biden face criminal charges?
While the connection between Latham, Perry and Hunter Biden has been a new wrinkle in the final days of Cheney’s primary run, Perry’s partnership at the firm was already a campaign issue, although mostly over its ties to China.
Just the News reported in February that while Perry “does not work directly on accounts linked to Chinese companies, as a partner, he reaps directly the financial rewards of the firm as a whole.”
Hageman said this arrangement “is exactly the problem with Washington, D.C.”
“What do we find out when we dig a little bit deeper,” Hageman said, is that Cheney and Perry “are personally, financially benefiting from working for China and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Saudi Arabia.”
“He has a choice, he can either work with his firm and take the stand that his wife is apparently advocating publicly, and say, ‘We’re not going to represent countries or companies that, number one have problems with human rights abuses, and number two, who are really kind of in a soft war with the United States.’ Or you can go to another law firm,” she said.
“Have some integrity.”
Those three words are the crux of the issue, though: If Perry is anything like the woman he married, he might not have any.
It’s not that Liz Cheney turned on then-President Donald Trump after Jan. 6, 2021. It’s that, as the haze from the Capitol incursion lifted on Jan. 7, she saw little more than a branding opportunity.
Like so many before her, she became a careerist NeverTrumper — someone whose entire political future was a gamble that the soon-to-be-former president would be so radioactive that loudly, constantly decrying his existence would be enough to catapult her from a middling position in GOP leadership to the speaker’s chair or the White House.
She gambled wrongly, but rest assured the swamp has plenty of job opportunities for her. The only question left to ask is whether CNN or MSNBC secures her services when she leaves office in January.
Not that she needs them. An estimate cited by Breitbart said Cheney’s net worth has increased more than 600 percent, “from an estimated $7 million when she first took office in 2017 to possibly more than $44 million in 2020.”
Liz Cheney doesn’t represent the people of Wyoming. She represents herself first and foremost, and then the Beltway machine that created her.
And, as for her husband, at least you can’t say she didn’t marry someone who shares her values — skewed though they may be.
