Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
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Read between April 5 - April 9, 2024
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Tim Mulvey brought years of experience in communications and press operations to the Select Committee. He oversaw important aspects of our hearings and o...
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In 2023, discovery materials from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox appeared to reinforce this point. Court documents including deposition testimony, as well as email and text exchanges, appear to indicate that Fox News hosts and executives knew the election-fraud claims were false, despite what Fox News was broadcasting to its viewers.
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Sean Hannity, for example, had reportedly testified that he never believed Trump’s claims that Dominion machines had stolen the election from Trump: “I didn’t believe it for one second.”
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In a text exchange with Tucker Carlson about Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, Laura Ingraham allegedly said, “Sidney is a complete nut. No on...
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Dana Perino reportedly referred to the election-fraud claims as “total bs,” “...
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And Fox Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch reportedly said in an email about January 6: “wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump ...
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Fox settled the Dominion litigation for...
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a federal judge concluded that Donald Trump and his adviser, John Eastman, had likely violated §1512(c)(2) and at least one other criminal statute in their many efforts to overturn the election.
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Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that former President Trump could not prevent the Committee from accessing the relevant documents. The court’s well-written opinion was memorable—and widely quoted for this point: “… Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
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the Republican National Committee (RNC) convened for its winter meeting. They adopted a resolution censuring Adam Kinzinger and me. In a statement referring to the January 6 investigation as “the persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the RNC accused Kinzinger and me of engaging in “behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the US House of Representatives, the Republican Party, and our republic….”
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The resolution reflected a political party that had lost its principles and, frankly, seemed to be led by morons. This was my reply: The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. I’m a Constitutional conservative, and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge.
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RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel immediately found herself having to explain how Republicans could possibly view the events of January 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” At one point, McDaniel said her principal concern was the Committee subpoenas that had gone out to 16 Michigan Republicans, all of whom had signed a fake electoral slate falsely certifying President Trump as the election winner. Two years later, Michig...
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John Eastman, for example, was the Chapman University law professor who had worked with Trump on the plan to overturn the election. Our investigation showed that Eastman himself did not believe Trump’s plans to be legally defensible.
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Eastman came in for an interview on December 9, 2021. But he invoked his 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination 100 times, including in response to questions about his direct discussions with Donald Trump.
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Jeffrey Clark, the DOJ lawyer who had met with Donald Trump repeatedly, also came in and took the 5th. Like Eastman, Clark invoked the 5th regarding questions about his communications with Donald Trump.
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General Mike Flynn, who met and spoke with Trump numerous times in the run-up to January 6—including on December 18 and perhaps afterward—likewise pleaded the 5th regardi...
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Political operative and convicted felon Roger Stone, who also apparently had conversations with Trump, also took the 5th in response to questions about those communications.
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Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Steve Bannon, and Peter Navarro had each talked to Donald Trump about January 6, and each of them refused to testify before the January 6th Committee.
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seditious conspiracy.
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the Oath Keepers were texting one another about Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson of Texas. One text said this: “Ronnie Jackson (TX) office inside Capitol—he needs OK [Oath Keeper] help. Anyone inside?”
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Another text read: “Dr. Ronnie Jackson—on the move. Needs protection. If anyone inside, cover him. He ...
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Judge Carter then turned to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, identifying Trump’s effort to install Jeffrey Clark as attorney general; numerous attempts to persuade state officials and legislatures to alter the election results; and a plan, coupled with sustained pressure on Vice President Pence, to ensure that certified slates of electoral votes in several key states would not be counted on January 6. The decision reached specific conclusions on the crime-fraud exception. First, Judge Carter addressed the same provision of criminal law that I had referenced in support of our ...more
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After laying out all of these specific findings, the court reached a final conclusion: Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory.…
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fallen Capitol Police Officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood.
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The Trump campaign did not know exactly what Donald Trump was hearing from the Justice Department, while the Justice Department did not know exactly what Trump was hearing from his campaign. Both entities were, in fact, telling Donald Trump the same thing: His stolen-election claims were bogus. And they were telling him this with specificity about each of the claims he was making.
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Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.
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As Americans, we all have a duty to ensure that what happened on January 6th never happens again, to set aside partisan battles, to stand together to perpetuate and preserve our great republic.
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Nearly 20 million Americans watched our June 9 hearing live, and it would eventually be streamed by millions more—an audience far bigger than we anticipated.
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My grandmother had been the first female deputy sheriff in Natrona County, Wyoming, and I thought of her. It did not matter to me how these hearings might affect my election prospects or my campaign or my future in politics. This was more important.
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In that speech, Kennedy talked about the ancient Greeks and their definition of happiness: “full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”
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In no area of life, the president told the students, would it be more important to “use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines,” than in service to our country.
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No matter what your party, government service should be noble, based on love of country and commitment to principles. But what I saw from my party now was unprincipled.
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Under our Constitution, the vice president is a member of both the executive branch and the legislative branch, where he or she serves as the president of the Senate.
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No man who would do these things can ever be our president again.
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At the close of our June 16 hearing, Judge Luttig described the prevailing state of affairs this way: “Donald Trump and his allies… are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
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And all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this.
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In 1983 Reagan had warned: It is up to us in our time to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.
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So let us all, as we leave here tonight, let us resolve that we will embrace the grace and the compassion and the love of country that unites us. Let us resolve that we will fight to do what is right. And that we will be able to look back on these days and to say in our time of testing, We did our duty and we stood for truth. Ultimately, that is what our duty as Americans requires of us, that we love our country more, that we love her so much, that we will stand above politics to defend her, and that we will do everything in our power to protect our Constitution and our freedom paid for by the ...more
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As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion.
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In almost every generation, Americans have given their lives to preserve the ideals of our founders. Each generation in our nation must be a steward of our history. But American history is not just our legacy. The United States is proof that human freedom can survive what has destroyed other democracies over millennia of human history.
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As I was writing this book, I found—pasted onto the pages of one of my Grandmother Cheney’s scrapbooks—President Ford’s concession statement from November 1976. Ford lost the presidential election that year to Jimmy Carter. The final tally in the Electoral College was 297 to 240. During the closing days of that campaign, President Ford had lost his voice. The morning after the election, when he placed the call to Jimmy Carter to concede the race, Ford handed the phone to his 35-year-old chief of staff, Dick Cheney, to read the concession statement to President-elect Carter. In the statement my ...more
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Today, we must take Donald Trump’s statements literally. Trump has told us that he thinks the Constitution can and should be suspended when necessary, that what happened on January 6 was justified, that in a second Trump presidency he would seek retribution. And much more.
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We have also now learned that most Republicans currently in Congress will do what Donald Trump asks, no matter what it is. We cannot rely on them to check his power.
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In November 1800, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, after he had spent his first night in the White House. His letter included a prayer, which is now inscribed above the fireplace in the White House state dining room. It reads, in part, “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
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