Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

oaths are not given to any specific president. They are given to preserve the Constitutional structure that has governed our republic for over 230 years. The oath does not bend or yield to popular sentiment, mob rule, or political threats. We do not compromise our oath. It compels us to adhere to the Constitution and rule of law… always. What the Constitution requires here is not a mystery. It is clear from the plain text of Article II and the 12th Amendment. The states and the people have the authority to choose the president, not Congress. Some have suggested that we should read more into the Constitution than it says—inferring authority the framers did not give us. We do not have some secret unwritten constitutional authority to overturn elections, impose our will, contradict state law, and contradict the rulings of the courts. If we assert that we do, we are creating a tyranny of Congress, stealing power from the states, and striking at the foundations of our republic. In the years to come, historians and scholars will take account of what we say here today. They will credit those who stood true to the text of the Constitution and honored their oaths.

McGovern asked members to take their seats. A minute or so later, however,

I went back to the Republican side just as a police officer moved to the microphone and made an announcement: We have had a breach of the Capitol Building, that’s going to be going into a lockdown of both chambers, the House and the Senate. Capitol Police is responding to the area where the individuals have breached the building, and we will advise you of further information once it becomes available to us. Please remain

calm and remain seated. You can move around inside, but

please do not try to leave at this time until we give you fu...

McGovern announced there was another update and asked for everyone’s attention. Paul Irving, who was then the House Sergeant at Arms, approached the microphone and said this: Everybody, you need to be prepared to get down under your chairs if necessary. We have folks entering the Rotunda and coming down this way. So, we’ll update you as soon as we can, but just be prepared. Stay calm.

We have tear gas in the Rotunda. Please be advised there are masks under your seats. Please grab a mask, place it in your lap, and be prepared to don your

Trump.

Really?

Lincoln famously warned of the danger of “mob law”: At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Key passage

The only way to fortify against this danger, Lincoln said, was for every American to pledge his life, his property, and

his sacred honor to the Constitution and laws: Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and Almanacs;—let it be preached from th...

He updated members on efforts to clear the Capitol. I told the group I had been in touch with Leader McConnell, and that there was bipartisan and bicameral agreement that we needed to return to work to finish our job. I did not mention Kevin McCarthy because I had not talked with him since the violence began. Hakeem and I both stressed that we would not let the mob prevail: We would return to count electoral votes. When we finished, the room erupted in applause.

Machalagh looked at me and said, “Mr. Jordan just told me that he just got off the phone with Kevin, and Kevin told him the opposite. Jordan says Kevin is going to carry on with the objections.” That can’t be right, I thought. There is no way that any leader would let these objections go on in the wake of the violent assault on the Capitol. The idea was so unimaginable that I assumed Jordan was lying. I was wrong. It turned out that Kevin was lying.

“What’s important is to recognize we have just had a violent mob assault the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent us from carrying out our Constitutional duties.”

overturned

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,

Elaine Chao,

Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building after a rally he addressed. As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.

Betsy DeVos

“There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.” She warned that “impressionable children are watching all of this.”

Five senior members of the national security council staff resigned, as did the White House social secretary and Melania Trump’s chief of staff. Mick Mulvaney, who had previously served as Donald Trump’s chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, resigned from his position as special envoy for Northern Ireland. In an interview

In his resignation letter, Schmid stressed the harm this had done to America’s security: Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic. The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests.

David McCullough

Get this

Tom Rice, one of the 10 Republicans who had voted to impeach Donald Trump, rose to speak: Guys, I think we’re confused. Liz’s statement did not cause the problems we face. It didn’t cause the thousands of registered Republicans in Arizona, or South Carolina, or Georgia to move over. What caused that was the president throwing a two-month temper tantrum after the election on November third, which culminated in a ransacking of the Capitol and the death of one, maybe three, Capitol Police officers. The president sat in the White House surrounded by Secret Service, tweeting that Mike Pence was a coward, and

watching TV, and couldn’t be bothered to answer calls for help.

New voice

There’s a poll out today that says the president has lost 20 points since December. In December, 65 percent of registered Republicans wanted him to run for president again. Today [that’s] 45 percent. And yet Kevin went to Mar-a-Lago this weekend, shook his hand, took a pic...

Bacon went even further: Thank God we had a good vice president that did the right thing… we would have had a Constitutional crisis unlike [any] we’ve seen since the Civil War. So this

was serious…

“She spoke up and warned us, and we needed that leadership,” Don concluded. “The president needed to stop what he did as 6 January approached and concede gracefully and we wouldn’t have been in this position.”

He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and

In 1995, my mother, Lynne Cheney, wrote a book titled Telling the Truth. She talked about the importance of teaching history and highlighted the dangers of political correctness in our educational institutions and elsewhere. At the time, political correctness was the term for what many today call wokeness. But my mother was not handling the issue in the divisive way people address wokeness today. She was tackling it historically and analytically, including by comparing political correctness with the orthodoxies found in societies that are not free.

In 2015, my father and I had coauthored a book called Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. It

Key book

Please join me in prayer. “Dear God, fill us with a love of freedom and a reverence for all your gifts. Help us to understand the gravity of this moment. Help us to remember that democratic systems can fray and suddenly unravel and when they do, they are gone forever. Help us to speak the truth and remember the words of John 8:32: ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.’ May our world see the power of faith, may our nation know the strength of selfless service. And may our enemies continue to taste the inescapable force of freedom.”

Sarah Matthews

Jamie Fleet,

Matt

Pottinger.

President “stand up” and enact his plan. Based on the evidence, the Court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly

Some of this evidence came from interviews of Mark Meadows’ principal aide in the White House, a woman named Cassidy Hutchinson.

Key witness

Alyssa Farah Griffin had initially alerted us that Hutchinson could be a key witness. While we did not know this at the time, we learned later that the detailed factual material we had filed in our briefs in the Meadows case had an immediate impact on Cassidy. By that point, Cassidy had sat for only two of the many interviews we would ultimately conduct with her.

And Cassidy had observed Mark Meadows burning documents in the fireplace of his West Wing office on a number of occasions. Alyssa also said that Cassidy was concerned about the Trump-funded lawyer

At the close of the debate, I wanted to describe—in clear terms—how I saw my duty: 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.

Today’s hearing is our seventh. We have covered significant ground over the past several weeks. And we have also seen a change in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approach this Committee. Initially, their strategy, in some cases, appeared to be to deny and delay. Today, there appears to be a general recognition that the Committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump—his Justice Department officials, his White House advisers, his White House Counsel, his campaign—all told him the 2020 election was not stolen.

Two years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take. No House seat—no office in this land—is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect, and I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty. Our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honorably the outcome of elections. And tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race.

If we do not condemn the conspiracies and the lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct—and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.… Our nation is barreling, once again, toward crisis, lawlessness, and violence. No American should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility, where their refusal to follow the rule of law will corrupt our future.

Lincoln and Grant and all who fought in our nation’s tragic Civil War, including my own great-great-grandfathers, saved our Union. Their courage saved freedom. And if we listen closely, they are speaking to us down the generations. We must not idly squander

what so many have fought and died for.