Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

THIS IS THE STORY OF the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office, and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution.

When our nation was tested after the presidential election of 2020, an alarming number of elected Republicans in Congress failed to do their duty. This is the story of how that happened, and why. It is a story that every American deserves to know.

So strong is the lure of power that men and women who had once seemed reasonable and responsible were suddenly willing to violate their oath to the Constitution out of political expediency and loyalty to Donald Trump.

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.”

Ultimately, all three of the lawyers who spoke at the press conference—Giuliani, Powell, and Ellis—would be sanctioned by courts, censured, or have their license to practice law suspended. And each would be indicted because of their lies about the election.

We were in dangerous territory. The president and his legal team were making outlandish and false claims that struck at the heart of our electoral process. Millions of Americans believed them.

It was becoming clear that the truth no longer really mattered.

Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff General James McConville issued a statement repeating what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, had said several months earlier: “There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election.” The DOD statement—which was factual and should have been unobjectionable—enraged Donald Trump.

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.

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

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.

I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do my fellow being; let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Having just lost a lawfully certified election, Trump was attempting to seize power unconstitutionally. If Pence had gone along, as one of the January 6 Select Committee witnesses later suggested, the conflict would very likely have been settled in the streets.

What Trump’s team was describing on this call was illegal. It was destructive. And they all knew by then that the stolen-election allegations were “complete nonsense” and “BS,” as Attorney General Barr and other Justice Department officials had repeatedly said. Yet here they were, trying it anyway.

As I left the Capitol on the evening of January 4, I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I kept replaying in my mind the discussions of the last few days. There was little doubt about what was happening: Donald Trump was trying to prevent Congress from fulfilling our constitutional duty. He was trying to seize power through illegal and unconstitutional means. And some of my Republican colleagues were helping him.

People died on January 6 because of Donald Trump’s lies. Had it not been for the actions of courageous members of law enforcement, many more lives likely would have been lost.

As I rushed down the stairs and through the Capitol tunnels, I knew already that Donald Trump had to be impeached and removed from office. He was a clear and present danger. His actions, including mobilizing the violent mob that was now laying siege to the Capitol, were undoubtedly impeachable offenses. Every minute that passed without an unambiguous public statement telling the mob to leave the Capitol made the case for impeachment and removal even stronger. The president’s unlawful conduct was endangering the republic.

The mob was hunting the vice president and chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” Donald Trump poured gasoline on the flames, tweeting at 2:24 p.m.: Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done

Later, when I saw the video of the vice president and his family being evacuated down the stairs in the Capitol Building, I was reminded of a photo of my father being evacuated down the stairs in the White House as al-Qaeda attacked our nation on 9/11. This time, the life of our vice president was threatened not by terrorists flying hijacked planes but by a violent mob sent by the president of the United States.

Kevin McCarthy lacked the courage and the honor to abide by his oath to the Constitution. This wasn’t leadership. It was cowardice, and it was craven. I wanted no part of it. I got up and walked out of the House chamber.

shortly before 4:00 a.m., Congress completed the counting of electoral votes: Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump by a count of 306 to 232. The mob had not prevailed, but the danger wasn’t over. The January 6 attack was an assault on our constitutional republic.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which explicitly provides that: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Among leadership—at least at that time—there was no question that Donald Trump was culpable for January 6.

Kevin said he was concerned about member security overall, and, in particular, he worried that if the House moved forward with impeachment, that would be divisive and would seriously increase the threat of violence against members.

Later that night, a freshman Republican forwarded me a note that Andrew Clyde had sent to all the freshman members, “summarizing” our leadership call. Clyde claimed that “there was majority agreement that the President did not incite this violence…” That was a lie. I sent Clyde’s message to Kevin and Steve. They both responded immediately. Kevin said, “He sent this to all of them? This isn’t what I heard or said.”

We had learned a lesson: We could not trust Andrew Clyde to be honest. A few months later, Clyde—who had been photographed trying to help barricade the doors on January 6 to stop the violent mob from invading the House chamber—said the day had looked just like “a normal tourist visit.”

The political question of whether a president should be impeached with just 12 days left in office was, according to the memo, “a judgment call,” but there was no question, according to this analysis, that the president’s actions had constituted an impeachable offense.

This was unambiguous. The Republican bill called January 6 a “domestic terrorist attack” because that’s what we all believed it was. Most of us had witnessed it firsthand. And we had since seen public footage of the horrific violence against police. I told my colleagues: “The mob on the steps of the Capitol got hold of a police officer… and dragged him down the steps, beat him.

Kevin McCarthy’s chief counsel, Machalagh Carr, forwarded a Twitter thread by attorney Seth Abramson that analyzed Trump’s Ellipse speech and concluded that the speech constituted “incitement.” Abramson called the speech “one of the most dangerous presidential addresses in American history.” Carr said his analysis “should be required reading for all House Republicans.”

Members believed Trump should be impeached, but they feared a vote for impeachment would put them—and their families—in danger.

the threat of violence was affecting how members voted, preventing them from voting to impeach the president who had already unleashed violence.

The threats were real, and they were coming in the form of calls, voice mails, social-media posts, text messages, and letters to members’ offices and homes. We were having discussions about where we could obtain body armor and whether official funds could...

Steve Scalise didn’t beat around the bush, either. He said this was “no time to equivocate what happened, it was wrong. It was anarchy. It was insurrection… there’s no excuse for what that was.” I knew that Steve would not support impeachment. But at this juncture, at least, he wasn’t trying to shade the truth about Donald Trump’s conduct, or back away from the facts.

When a president behaves the way Donald Trump

behaved, and refuses to accept the peaceful transfer of power, he poses a risk that America cannot bear.

My vote to impeach Donald Trump is occasionally portrayed as if I were standing alone in opposition to my party. I wasn’t. Nine other Republicans stood with me, all for essentially the same reasons. For the next few years, we became known both within the Republican Conference and in the press as “the impeachers.” If there had been a vote on January 13, 2021 for censure and condemnation of Donald Trump, my bet is that we would easily have had more than half the conference, including all of the Republican

leadership team. And had the impeachment vote been by secret ballot, it would have been overwhelmingly

in favor of impe...

achment.

Ultimately, the article of impeachment was not transmitted to the Senate until January 25. I suspect that some in Washington believed impeaching Donald Trump was enough. They thought that, after all that had happened, he would no longer be a force in American politics. This was wishful thinking—

Three weeks after the attack on the US Capitol, the Republican Leader of the House of Representatives was prostrating himself before the man responsible for January 6.

WHEN I FIRST SAW THE photo of Kevin McCarthy standing next to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on January 28, grins on both men’s faces, I thought it was fake. Not a month had passed since Kevin was running through the hallways of the Capitol to escape Trump’s violent mob and calling members of Trump’s family, with fear in his voice, begging them to get Trump to call off the riot. Not even Kevin McCarthy could be this craven, I thought. I was wrong.

Kevin needed money. Trump had lists of small-dollar donors. But Kevin would have to go beg Trump for them. And in order to use those lists, Kevin would have to help Donald Trump cover up the stain of his assault on our democracy.

Less than three weeks after calling for Trump to

be censured and condemned, Kevin McCarthy had obviously done a deal with Trump. And now McCarthy was calling the House Republicans “Trump’s majority.”

Among the many incoming messages, one of my favorites was a handwritten note from a Wyoming voter: “Liz: Never liked you much, but I’m starting to.”

A number of members of my detail had themselves fought to defend the Capitol on January 6. They showed unwavering professionalism as they stood by on more than one occasion listening to one of my constituents claim it hadn’t been a violent day. The Capitol Police deserve our unending gratitude.

Sometimes after I talked through the facts of the 2020 election—including how the courts ruled and what the judges said—people I met with were willing to reconsider their embrace of Trump’s lies. Others remained defiant and angry. 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.

Today Donald Trump poses a threat that many in Washington simply fail to grasp. He can move Americans to action based on total dishonesty. I can tell you from my time working to support democracy overseas that the power to rally a mob must never be underestimated. Nor should the fear that a mob can instill in people of reason. A person with that kind of power—to intimidate