By Weston Blasi
The winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House, Harriet Hageman, claimed Rep. Liz Cheney never called her to concede the election — but there’s a recording that says otherwise.
Hageman said in a Fox News interview that Cheney sent her a two-second voice message that did not include “any kind of concession or anything else.”
But the Cheney campaign has provided audio to Politico in which Cheney is heard calling Hageman to congratulate her shortly after the race was called by the Associated Press.
Listen to it here:
“Hi, Harriet, it’s Liz Cheney calling,” Cheney is heard saying on the recording. “It’s about 8:13 on Tuesday the 16th. I’m calling to concede the election and to congratulate you on the win. Thanks.”
Cheney made a public concession speech shortly after the race was called on Tuesday. Politico reporter Olivia Beavers tweeted that Cheney had tried “multiple times” to get in touch with Hageman before going on stage to concede.
Hageman’s campaign later informed MarketWatch that the candidate did receive correspondence from Cheney but that the audio was muffled and unclear, adding that it was “obviously a technical problem.”
Cheney, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, serves as the vice chair of the bipartisan Jan. 6 select committee, which has been investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and presenting evidence that Trump and his supporters instigated the insurrection .
The day after her primary loss in Wyoming, Cheney hinted that she is “thinking about” running for president in 2024.
“I am absolutely going to continue this battle,” she said. “It’s the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in, and I think it’s certainly the most important thing, challenge, that our nation has faced in recent history, and maybe since the Civil War. And it’s one that we must win.”
Cheney is a third-term Republican congresswoman, and was behind in almost every poll leading up to her loss against Hageman.
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In the weeks before the vote, Cheney called on her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to help sway Republican voters with a viral political ad that labeled Trump a “coward” and a “threat” to American democracy — she still ended up losing by a roughly 37-percentage-point margin .
