Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

Elected officials who believe their own political survival is more important than anything else threaten the survival of our republic, no matter what they tell themselves to justify their cowardice.

Not a single member of Congress—including those from the states Trump was already saying had been stolen from him—suggested that their own election had been rigged or was flawed in any way.

Jordan was not interested in understanding or discussing the rules. He didn’t seem to think the rules mattered. “The only thing that matters,” Jordan said, “is winning.”

Esper believed he had been fired in part because he had made it clear that he would not stand for any use of the military to contest the outcome of an election.

Although Chris Miller had briefly been placed in charge of the National Counterterrorism Center, he had never managed anything close to the scale of DOD. He was quite possibly the least-qualified nominee to become secretary of defense since the position was created in 1947.

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.

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

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, 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.…”

Historian Timothy Snyder has described the deep damage this was doing to our country: “Making [Trump’s] fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh.”

President Trump’s conduct: … was a serious act, political in nature, that corrupted or subverted the political process and threatened the order of political society. As such, in my opinion, the House of Representatives is justified in pursuing the constitutional remedy of impeachment.

“The more we see & learn, the worse it is.”

largest bipartisan vote in history for the conviction of a president on an impeachment charge.

The GOP was becoming an anti-Constitution party. And too many of our leaders were willing to accept that.

I asked Condi if she could think of any historic examples of countries successfully throwing off cults of personality. “Not without great violence and upheaval,” she said.

The former president is using the same language that he knows provoked violence on January 6th. As a party, we need to be focused on the future. We need to be focused on embracing the Constitution, not embracing insurrection. I think it is very important for people to realize that a fundamental part of the Constitution, and of who we are as Americans, is the rule of law.… If you attack the judicial process and you attack the rule of law, you aren’t defending the Constitution; you’re at war with the Constitution.

Two reporters who had interviewed both McCarthy and Trump during this period wrote this: When Trump took to calling McCarthy a “pussy,” McCarthy “responded not by defying the former president but by more or less setting out to prove him right.”

a free society that abandons the truth—that abandons the rule of law—cannot remain free.

from Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 Inaugural address: The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

It can be tough to learn that you’ve been fooled, tricked by those you trusted. That you let yourself be deceived. The natural reaction is denial, and a refusal to listen to anything to the contrary.

the power to rally a mob must never be underestimated. Nor should the fear that a mob can instill in people of reason.

likely unprecedented for a Republican member to accept a committee assignment from a Democratic Speaker.

At this point in the fall of 2021, Jim Jordan was saying that investigating January 6—including what Donald Trump did on that date—was the job of the Department of Justice. Today Jordan calls that same investigation the “weaponization” of the Justice Department.

January 6th was without precedent. There has been no stronger case in our nation’s history for a congressional investigation into the actions of a former president. This investigation is not like other congressional inquiries. Our Constitution, the structure of our institutions, and the rule of law—which are at the heart of what makes America great—are at stake. We cannot be satisfied with incomplete answers, or half-truths; and we cannot surrender to President Trump’s efforts to hide what happened. We will be persistent, professional, and nonpartisan. We must get to the objective truth and ensure that January 6th never happens again.

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.”

The court concluded that “[t]he January 6th Committee has… demonstrated a sound factual predicate for requesting these presidential documents specifically. There is a direct linkage between the former President and the events of” January 6th. The court also concluded that our committee would have been entitled to the presidential documents even if Donald Trump were the sitting President.

“Because the Court of Appeals concluded that President Trump’s claims would have failed even if he were the incumbent, his status as former President necessarily made no difference to the Court’s decision.”

The illegality of the plan was obvious. Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. As Vice President Pence stated, “No Vice President in American history has ever asserted such authority.”

Freeman recounted the traumatic episode this way: There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby—a small-business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.

Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution. … I come to this choice as a mother, committed to ensuring that my children and their children can continue to live in an America where the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed. We must ensure that we live in a nation that is governed by laws and not by men. And I come to this choice as an American, as a citizen of the greatest nation God has ever created on the face of this earth. And I come to this choice as a person of faith, as someone who believes deeply that our rights come from God, not from the government. And always mindful that we must pray as though everything depends upon God, because it does. And we must work as though everything depends upon us, because it does.

I remembered those last lines from the sermon delivered by the Navy chaplain at the Camp David presidential retreat on the first Sunday following 9/11. They are from a prayer of St. Ignatius.

I recalled Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony from the January 6th Committee hearing the day before: “Her bravery and her patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold. Little girls all across this great nation are seeing what it really means ...

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 blood of so many.

I will never put party above my duty to the country. I will never put party above my duty to the Constitution. I swore an oath under God and I will abide by that oath. I won’t say something that I know is wrong simply to earn the votes of people, to earn political support.… So I’m asking for your vote, and I’m asking you to understand that I will never violate my oath of office. And if you’re looking for somebody who will, then you need to vote for somebody else on this stage because I won’t. I will always put my oath first.

My constituents deserved the truth, even if it wasn’t what many of them wanted to hear.

We’ve seen bravery and honor in these hearings. Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, both of you will be remembered for that. As will Cassidy Hutchinson. She sat here alone, took the oath, and testified before millions of Americans. She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage, and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah, and our other witnesses—including Officer Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman—are an inspiration to American women and to American girls. We owe a debt to all of those who have and will appear here.

This committee has shown you the testimony of dozens of Republican witnesses, those who served President Trump loyally for years. The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies; it is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees—his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity. No nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible. Every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

President Ford congratulated Carter on his victory, then looked to the future: As one who has been honored to serve the people of this great land—both in Congress and as President—I believe that we must now put the divisions of the campaign behind us and unite the country once again in a common pursuit of peace and prosperity.

We depend upon the goodwill of our leaders and their dedication to duty to ensure the survival of our republic. Only a man unacquainted with honor, courage, and character would see weakness in this.