Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

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

She said that on January 6, Cassidy had heard Meadows and others saying President Trump believed Mike Pence “deserved to be hung” in response to the mob chants of “Hang Mike Pence.” 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 who was representing her.

We knew that Attorney General Bill Barr had told Donald Trump forcefully and repeatedly that there was no evidence to substantiate Trump’s election-fraud claims. Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and his deputy, Rich Donoghue, had also done so repeatedly. As had Trump campaign officials. As had Trump White House staff.

Although our investigation never found communications that genuinely came from Justice Thomas, we did find text messages and other communications from his wife, Ginni. I had known Ginni Thomas for decades. By the time we were investigating January 6, I had not spoken to her for some time. I never thought of Ginni as a leader of any conservative group or movement—she was usually assisting someone else. I thought that others tried to use Ginni’s notoriety to gain support for their own causes. I suspected she might have fallen into some role supporting the January 6 effort, but from my knowledge of her, I doubted very much that she was a mastermind of any of it.

I was disappointed that Ginni Thomas had been deceived by the demonstrably untrue election-fraud nonsense. I was even more concerned that she did not seem to respect the rulings of our courts. Ginni, like many others, seemed to believe everything she read and saw in the Trump-friendly media. She

Indeed, the planning for January 6 appears to have consumed the vast majority of the president’s time for several weeks in December of 2020. He was doing almost nothing else. Donald Trump did not do all this on a whim. It was not something planned in one hour, or in one day, or even in one week. It was complicated and detailed.

Donald Trump refused to do what everyone knew was absolutely necessary: He refused, for hours, to instruct the rioters to stand down and leave, all while continuing to lobby legislators to stop the count. As a result, more than 140 law-enforcement officers were attacked and injured, and five deaths eventually resulted. So these were the seven principal elements of the Trump plan. We recognized that each hearing would require a careful, fact-based presentation. And each would rely on testimony from Republican officials and Republican witnesses.

A day before our hearing, Republican Representative Troy Nehls demonstrated just how craven certain Republican members of Congress had become: “They’re going to get the sobbing police officer,” Nehls predicted, “or sobbing Democrat or somebody that said how terrible this was and now they are suffering from PTSD.”

But he did not condemn the attack. Instead, he justified it. “These are the things and events that happen,” he said, “when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.”

Aware of the rioters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence,” the President responded with this sentiment: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” Mike Pence “deserves” it.

Many Americans had heard that courts had ruled against Donald Trump, but few knew that Trump’s own campaign leadership had been telling him he lost. We also realized this: 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.

Next we played a clip of Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka confessing that she agreed with Attorney General Barr that her father had lost.

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.

But I am not combat trained. That day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond what any law-enforcement officer has ever trained for. I just remember—I just remember that moment of stepping behind the line and just seeing the absolute war zone that the West Front had become.

Nearly every defendant—and almost every person who can be found on video explaining their actions on January 6—makes it clear that they were in Washington at Donald Trump’s behest to “stop the steal,” to halt what Trump had told them was a corrupt conspiracy by Democrats and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) to rob him of the presidency.

Donald Trump said this: “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.” Donald Trump has frequently returned to this notion—that his election-fraud allegations justified unconstitutional and illegal acts: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

On January 6, Mike Pence’s role was purely ministerial, purely procedural. He could not change the result of the election. Our Constitution unambiguously instructed him to open envelopes so the electoral votes could then be counted. Period.

Jacob asked Eastman, “Did you advise the President that in your professional judgment the Vice President DOES NOT have the power to decide things unilaterally?” Eastman responded that Trump had been “so advised.” Then Eastman continued: “But you know him—once he gets something in his head, it is hard to get him to change course.” Donald Trump would not accept Mike Pence’s conclusion, as president of the Senate, that he could not legally do what Trump wanted him to do. So Trump reacted—persistently, with anger, and with repeated threats—to try to force Mike Pence into doing something that Pence and others had already told Trump was illegal.

Donald Trump attacked his VP once again, this time in a tweet accusing Pence of having failed to deliver the election. That triggered many in the crowd to surge forward into the Capitol as they hunted the vice president, chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” No man who would do these things can ever be our president again.

Americans must not lose sight of an appalling fact. Certain Republican members of the House of Representatives—including many members of the Freedom Caucus—fully supported what Donald Trump was trying to force Mike Pence to do. That is a crucial point: A significant number of House Republicans thought they could ignore the Electoral College result and find a way to reinstall Trump as president.

Individual state office holders, individual election workers, and legislators, along with their families, were subject to threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment. The threats began in November and December 2020, and they were publicized far in advance of January 6.

Among the worst incidents of Donald Trump’s political-intimidation campaign was what he and Rudy Giuliani did to Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman. Moss, too, had received a “Profile in Courage” award, and I had met them both at the ceremony where Rusty Bowers was also honored. Trump and Rudy Giuliani had a theory, hatched from watching a video, that Moss and Freeman had somehow utilized a thumb drive to corrupt the machines tabulating votes in Fulton County, Georgia. The video in question showed Freeman handing Moss something small. It was not a thumb drive. It was a ginger mint. But Donald Trump attacked both Moss and Freeman relentlessly on a national stage, describing Ruby Freeman as “a professional vote scammer and hustler.” Our hearing described how a group of Trump supporters had appeared at Freeman’s house, barged through her front door, and tried to perform a citizen’s arrest. In the wake of the incident, the FBI cautioned Freeman that it was no longer safe for her to remain in her own home.

It was clear, though, that no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party. Throughout the 18 months of our work, certain Republican House members and senators who knew better elected to play to that audience anyway. Senator Tom Cotton, for example, went on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show at one point and disparaged the hearings as a partisan exercise—and therefore inconsistent with “Anglo-American jurisprudence.”

Cassidy testified, for example, that the White House had begun receiving information about the threat of violence even before President Trump’s Ellipse speech, and that Meadows had recognized in advance that January 6 could be violent. She testified that President Trump understood there were weapons in the crowd before he instructed his supporters to march to the Capitol. She testified that President Trump’s White House legal team was worried about the contents of his Ellipse speech. And Hutchinson had heard in detail from other White House staff that President Trump was obviously and demonstrably angry—both in the presidential limo and upon his subsequent return to the White House—after being informed by Secret Service agents that he could not lead the crowd to the Capitol.

The most damning evidence of all, in my view, was that Trump had refused for hours to instruct the rioters to leave the Capitol. He had the ability to stop it all at the outset, but he wouldn’t. He watched and let it happen. What type of man would refuse for hours on end to instruct a violent mob of his supporters attacking the Capitol and the police to stand down and leave?

The [White House] valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the attorney general’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall, which was causing him to have to clean up. So I grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off the wall to help the valet out. He said something to the effect of, He’s really ticked off about this. I would stay clear of him for right now. He’s really, really ticked off about this right now.

2022 was very different. I had watched thousands of hardworking, good-hearted people across Wyoming fall prey to Donald Trump’s lies. Some truly believed the falsehoods he was spreading. Others knew the truth but chose to perpetuate the lies.

We had learned that following our prior hearing, Donald Trump had attempted to contact a committee witness—a witness we had not yet identified in any hearing. I announced publicly that we had alerted the Department of Justice to Trump’s call. We would not stand for efforts by Donald Trump or anyone else to try to intimidate or tamper with our witnesses.

To this day, the evidence from this final summer hearing is among the most potent information I can share with Americans who still think that Donald Trump has been railroaded, or that January 6 was a sightseeing visit by “tourists” engaged in “legitimate political discourse.” Most people who will take the time to listen realize that there is no excuse or defense for Donald Trump’s unwillingness to step to the microphone and instruct the rioters to leave. A man who would behave that way when his character is tested lacks the sense of right and wrong that most Americans learn from their parents.

On August 8, 2022, a team of federal agents conducted a lawful search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. At the time, we didn’t know the full extent of Donald Trump’s obstruction of efforts by the DOJ to retrieve classified documents from him. But Trump’s response to the raid was no surprise: He claimed he was a victim. Trump’s victim strategy had enjoyed ringing success in deep-red states such as Wyoming. And at least one violent assault on an FBI field office had ensued. But now he weaponized that strategy by working to publicly disclose a number of the FBI agents who had been involved in the search.

Members of my staff—both on Capitol Hill and in Wyoming—had weathered harassment, including from family members who were angry that they had stayed with me. Before joining my team, many of these staffers had worked in Republican politics, or in Republican offices on Capitol Hill; it would no doubt have been easier for them to keep their heads down and quietly go to work for someone else. I certainly would have understood. I felt grateful—and honored—that we had stood together.

I began my Election Night speech this way: 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.

At the heart of the attack on January 6 is a willingness to embrace dangerous conspiracies that attack the very core premise of our nation: that lawful elections—reviewed by the courts when necessary, and certified by the states and Electoral College—determine who serves as president.

THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER OF 2022, it became increasingly clear that text messages among Secret Service agents on January 6 had been destroyed. We had seen reports that a criminal investigation had been initiated relating to the missing texts. The deletion of these texts was certainly suspicious, and it made our job much more difficult.

In the days leading up to January 6, and on that morning itself, the Secret Service was receiving warnings about the potential for violence—and the White House personnel interacting with them knew it. They knew. This was not just a single stray report, or one isolated intelligence analysis. Instead, the signs were many. The potential for violence should not have been a surprise; indeed, based on communications among Trump supporters identified in the intelligence and threat reporting, it was entirely predictable.

The bottom line is this: Donald Trump never should have summoned his supporters to Washington for January 6. And as it became clear that they were angry and could suddenly turn violent, he should have canceled his Ellipse speech and told them to leave town. He never should have addressed the crowd the way he did. He never should have instructed them to march to the Capitol. And once the violence erupted, he should have intervened and instructed them to leave the Capitol immediately—certainly when he was informed that a riot was underway.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said he blames Ashli Babbitt’s death on the Capitol Police. Yet if anyone other than Ashli Babbitt is responsible for her death, it is Donald Trump. She died trying to keep Donald Trump in office. She died because she believed Donald Trump’s lies. Donald Trump could have and should have put a stop to all of this before she died. This was his responsibility.

Both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had played key roles in the Capitol assault. Members of each of those two far-right militias had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. We all suspected there was more to this story. For these and other reasons, the Committee did not feel that we could close our investigation of January 6 without seeking direct testimony from Donald Trump. As it turned out, Donald Trump’s earlier posturing was just posturing. 57.

In a just world, the January 6th Select Committee investigation, and the criminal prosecutions that have now followed, would be the end of a dark period in our nation’s history. The man who mobilized a violent assault on our Capitol—who attempted to overturn an election and seize power—would have no political future. Donald Trump and those who aided him would be scorned and punished. But as I write this in the fall of 2023, Trump is running for president of the United States once again, and he holds a sizable lead among Republican contenders. Today, none of us can tell if the story of January 6 is nearing its end or is only just beginning. We may have many darker chapters ahead.

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. Some have suggested that “the normal U.S. checks and balances” of our constitutional system would constrain Trump. They won’t.

If Trump is on the ballot, the 2024 presidential election will not just be about inflation, or budget deficits, or national security, or any of the many critical issues we Americans normally face. We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic. As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.