Liz Cheney says Republicans 'going through contortions' to justify classified documents at Mar-a-Lago shows how 'fundamentally destructive' Trump has been to the party

• Liz Cheney called out Republican party members who continue to defend Donald Trump.
• Speaking at Texas Tribune Fest, Cheney said members of the GOP are "going through contortions."

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said Republicans continuing to defend Donald Trump in the midst of his storing highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate shows how "fundamentally destructive" the former president has been to the GOP.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival, Cheney called out senior members of the GOP who are "going through contortions" to support Trump, such as those who slammed federal agents who executed a search warrant at his Florida residence on August 8.

"I think it's the latest example of how fundamentally destructive Donald Trump has been and part of the destruction that he's caused is the behavior that my party apparently now will accept," she told Evan Smith, CEO of The Texas Tribune.

The vice chair of the Jan 6 committee has been one of the few outspoken GOP critics of Trump. In August, she lot her congressional seat to Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman.

During the interview, Cheney hinted that new information and evidence will be heard during the televised meeting on Wednesday in Washington, DC.

When asked by Smith whether former Vice President Mike Pence would testify, Cheney said she is hopeful.

"The vice president played a crucial role that day," she said, referring to the events of January 6, in which Pence resisted pressure from Trump to reverse the outcome of the election: "What Donald Trump was pressuring Mike Pence to do was illegal and was unconstitutional and Mike Pence refused to do that and so we owe him a huge gratitude because he did the right thing that day."

On Monday, in one of her first speeches since her primary defeat in August, Cheney said Pence was "essentially the president for most of that day."