Board Member Says Group Declined to Honor Liz Cheney for Fear of Trump

A Pulitzer Prize winner resigned from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on Tuesday, protesting what he said was the group’s snub of former Representative Liz Cheney for its highest honor out of fears that Donald J. Trump would retaliate if he returned to the presidency.

David Hume Kennerly, an acclaimed photographer for his coverage of the Vietnam War, who was also the chief White House photographer for Mr. Ford, criticized the foundation for its decision to bypass Ms. Cheney for the Gerald R. Ford Medal of Distinguished Public Service.

In his resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times and first reported by Politico, Mr. Kennerly wrote that Ms. Cheney, one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics in the Republican Party, should have been a consensus pick for the honor for her role in the government’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “America is fortunate to have Liz Cheney still out there on the front lines of freedom vigorously defending our Constitution and democratic way of life,” he wrote.

Mr. Kennerly, who worked for United Press International and had been a board member since the early 2000s, nominated Ms. Cheney for the medal last year and said that he had urged the foundation’s executive committee to reconsider her this year. He noted that Ms. Cheney was a board member of the foundation.

“A key reason Liz’s nomination was turned down was your agita about what might happen if the former president is re-elected,” Mr. Kennerly wrote. “Some of you raised the specter of being attacked by the Internal Revenue Service and losing the foundation’s tax-exempt status as retribution for selecting Liz for the award.”

Gleaves Whitney, the executive director of the Ford