Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Appointed by Trump himself, Krebs had spent two years working to harden America’s election systems from outside interference.

November 12, Krebs had issued a joint statement with other state and federal election officials explaining that “the 2020 election was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Trump fired Krebs via tweet,

Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Joseph DiGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Boris Epshteyn—a group of lawyers representing Trump—

Ultimately, all three of the lawyers who spoke at the press conference—Giuliani, Powell, and Ellis—would be sanctioned by courts, censured, or have their license to practice law suspended. And each would be indicted because of their lies about the election.

The Republican National Committee’s own lawyer, Justin Riemer, also sounded the alarm about the lies being told by the president’s lawyers.

“What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court. They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.”

Ronald Reagan quote: To a few of us here today, this is a solemn and most momentous occasion; and yet, in the history of our Nation, it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

It was becoming clear that the truth no longer really mattered.

When House Republicans convened by phone on December 1, Texas Representative Louie Gohmert, himself a purveyor of crackpot claims, got in the queue to speak.

When his lawsuit was dismissed, Gohmert claimed that the only option left was to take to the streets and get violent.

Gohmert was suggesting to people that their country was being stolen from them and there was only one way to save it.

Never did any of Trump’s allegations of fraud—including supposed fraud by Dominion Voting Systems, by Smartmatic, or by any other voting machine or software company—prove to be true. None of it was backed up by evidence.

By December 1, Donald Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, had had enough of what he later called “bullshit” election claims. Barr told the Associated Press that the Department of Justice had been investigating the allegations of fraud, and “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

On Monday, December 7, the state of Texas petitioned the Supreme Court, challenging the results of the presidential election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—all four states won by Joe Biden.

filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Once the Supreme Court ruled on the Texas suit, Donald Trump appeared to have no further recourse in the courts. He had lost almost every case, and the election litigation was all but over.

Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign,

General Michael Flynn, who had received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump less than a month earlier, spoke shortly after Pierson.

“The courts do not decide who the next president of the United States of America will be. We the people decide.”

played some of the comments back for my husband when he walked into the kitchen. “It sounds like they’re advocating the violent overthrow of the government,” Phil said.

In an email to McCarthy counsel Machalagh Carr the next morning, December 13, I summed up the situation this way: “I am deeply concerned, having watched the speeches at the Trump rally on the Mall yesterday, and listening to the President’s continued claims, that this has gone far beyond petitioning a court for relief. Speakers on the Mall were calling for rebellion.”

Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff General James McConville issued a statement repeating what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, had said several months earlier: “There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

Donald Trump. He instructed the director of White House personnel, Johnny McEntee, to call Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, apparently to convey the message that if any further statements like this were made, the officials would be fired.

The framers of our Constitution therefore spent much of the summer of 1787 searching for the best and most durable way to secure our nation’s newly won liberty.

In Article VI of our Constitution, the founders required that every member of Congress, all state legislators, and “all executive and judicial Officers” of the federal and state governments take an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution. For elected representatives, the oath must supersede any duty to represent their constituents. They must represent constituents’ interests solely in a manner that complies with the representatives’ paramount duty to the Constitution.

The founders had utmost confidence in the wisdom and grace of George Washington. But they were not convinced that every future president would be so honorable. This is why Article II of our Constitution details precisely what the president must pledge: to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Under our Constitution, the president is selected by a separately organized group of Americans, called Electors, chosen nowadays through popular election in each state.

The founders were concerned that a faction in Congress might conspire to control the selection of a president. They granted Congress what is, in most circumstances, only a ministerial role: counting the electoral votes that have been ce...

As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 68, “No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States” can...

Congress does not have the authority to undo an election by refusing to count state-certified electoral votes. Period.

“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President.…”

Thus, the Constitutional text tells us very clearly what Congress’ role is and is not.

C]alling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

Ignatius suggested the personnel changes Trump had made at the Pentagon since he lost the presidential election could be a sign that “pro-Trump officials might be mobilizing to secure levers of power.”

January 2, Ted Cruz, along with Senators Blackburn, Braun, Daines, Johnson, Kennedy, and Lankford—as well as Senators-elect Hagerty, Lummis, Marshall, and Tuberville—announced that they would object to electors from “disputed states.”

As is typical for Cruz, he was grandstanding for his own benefit. It was one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition I’ve ever seen in Washington.

I included this quote from an 19th-century Quaker missionary in my remarks: I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do my fellow being; let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Having just lost a lawfully certified election, Trump was attempting to seize power unconstitutionally.

What Trump’s team was describing on this call was illegal. It was destructive. And they all knew by then that the stolen-election allegations were “complete nonsense” and “BS,” as Attorney General Barr and other Justice Department officials had repeatedly said. Yet here they were, trying it anyway.

The Parliamentarian is a nonpartisan career official, responsible for maintaining the precedents of the House and providing guidance to members on House rules and procedures.

I was the House Republican Conference chair—the third-ranking member of leadership.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley would not withdraw his objection.

Ultimately, despite the carnage of the day, eight United States senators voted to object to electoral votes in Pennsylvania or Arizona: Senators Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Lummis, Marshall, Scott, and Tuberville. All told, 139 House members voted in favor of objections that evening, including Leader McCarthy and Whip Scalise.

Jim Jordan had apparently already been calling other members, aggressively defending Trump.

We thought some in our party, like Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert, were potentially provoking some of those threats.

Mo Brooks of Alabama had given an incendiary speech to the crowd at the Ellipse on January 6, and some of our members were urging that he be stripped of his committee assignments.

Early the next morning, President George W. Bush sent me this note: Liz, Courage is in short supply these days. Thank you for yours. You showed strong leadership and I’m not surprised. Lead on. 43.

Peter Meijer, a veteran who had served in Iraq, had been in Congress for 10 days when he had to make the courageous decision to vote to impeach.

Meijer lost his primary in 2022 to an election-denier opponent—whom the Democrats had backed in an effort to flip the seat. When he was asked if he had any regrets about his vote to impeach, Meijer said, “Not one. I would rather lose office with my character intact than stay reelected having made sacrifices of the soul.”