Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

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