Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

I believe that Donald Trump’s decision to attack the lawfully certified Electoral College results and to ignore the rulings of our courts was an assault on the structural constitutional safeguards that keep us free.

Protect Constitution

we compiled a 21-page memorandum that spelled it out succinctly. The simple conclusion: Congress does not have the authority to undo an election by refusing to count state-certified electoral votes. Period.

As the Constitution requires, Congress’s role in this specific context is ministerial only: Congress counts the certified electoral votes. The 12th Amendment is very clear in these circumstances: “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,

In addition to the constitutional text, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 made clear that Congress was obligated to accept as “conclusive” each governor’s official certification of the election outcome in their respective state. Congress had received only one official certified electoral slate from each state; those certifications were conclusive.1 After

States autbhorize

Over in the Senate on 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.” They released a joint statement containing no evidence of any fraud or irregularities. Nor did they name the states whose electors they would be voting to throw out, saying instead that they would “reject the electors from disputed states.” They would be doing so because of the “unprecedented allegations” of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. It was true that there had been unprecedented allegations about the 2020 election. Donald Trump and his allies had spent months making these allegations, spreading stolen-election lies they knew to be false. The senators cited a poll showing that 39 percent of Americans believed “the election was rigged.” In other words, these 11 senators were taking the position that because Donald Trump had successfully spread falsehoods about election fraud, and because a poll showed many people believed those falsehoods, Congress could refuse to do what the Constitution explicitly required. Cruz proposed a 10-day “audit” that would have violated both the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act. The text of the 12th Amendment clearly requires that the counting process occur immediately, including in this directive: “The President of the Senate shall… open all the certificates and the...

Senators agruik ng to oberturn electoral votwe ahInst the Constitution

“Eric Trump is on Hannity threatening/promising primaries for anyone who does not object. Where is our leadership? Is this what our party has become? I’m beyond disgusted.”

EricTrump

Kennedy talked about the ancient Greeks and their definition of happiness: “full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

JFK happiness