Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

Since 1797, when George Washington voluntarily handed the power of the presidency to John Adams, every American president had fulfilled his solemn obligation to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power—until Donald Trump. When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he attempted to overturn the results in order to seize power illegally and remain in office.

The end of this story hasn’t yet been written.

The methods Donald Trump is using to undermine our democracy are not unique to him. I saw authoritarian leaders use many of these same tactics in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and across the Middle East when I was working for the US State Department.

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.

McCarthy appeared to be dealing in reality. This made it all the more surprising when I saw his appearance on Fox News just a few hours later: “President Trump won this election,” Kevin proclaimed, “so everyone who is listening, do not be quiet! Do not be silent about this! We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” McCarthy knew that what he was saying was not true.

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.”

No lame-duck president focused on securing the nation would replace his top civilian leaders at DOD days after losing an election. Yet that’s what Trump was doing.

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.

Douglas MacGregor, a retired colonel who regularly spreads pro-Putin propaganda on American airwaves, was named senior adviser to the secretary of defense.

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.

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.

Members who bragged about their conservative beliefs, and their fidelity to the plain meaning of the text of the Constitution, were now arguing that Congress should claim power found nowhere in the Constitution to disregard the will of the people and overturn an election.

As I listened to Mike Johnson claim that Arizona “clearly violated” the Constitution in its selection of presidential electors, it occurred to me that I had never heard him raise a concern about Arizona’s elections before.

To my knowledge, Johnson had never made a single argument to our conference challenging the election in Arizona. Yet now he was on the floor of the House, arguing that we should ignore the rulings of federal and state courts in Arizona and throw out the results of Arizona’s election, thereby disenfranchising millions of voters.

I looked over at Representative Jason Smith, sitting in the front row. Jason had been one of the members arguing in favor of objections. The C-SPAN cameras captured me as I pointed at him and said, “You did this.” I was angry. “You did this.”

A few moments later, Dean Phillips, a Democratic member from Minnesota, yelled at my Republican colleagues from his seat in the House gallery: “This is because of you!”

As I sat back down, Raskin was still opposite me, looking down at his phone. “Liz,” he said, “there is a Confederate flag flying inside the United States Capitol.”

We later learned that, at this same time, senior staff in the White House were begging President Donald Trump to tell the rioters to halt the violence and leave the Capitol Building. He refused.

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 further instructions.

“Do not lie down or try to take cover,” he warned me. “You will not be safe in here if they breach the chamber. Get out of here, fast. Go out that door,” he said, pointing at the door to the right of the Speaker’s chair next to the historic portrait of Lafayette.

Jim Jordan approached me. “We need to get the ladies off the aisle,” he said and put out his hand. “Let me help you.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Get the ladies off the aisle? Really?! He and his coconspirators in the White House and Congress had provoked this attack on the heart of American democracy, and now he thought I needed or wanted his help? I swatted his hand away. “Get away from me. You f—ing did this.”

There was an awful din in the chamber by this point. As the whine of the gas masks mingled with the sounds of members calling loved ones and preparing to fight the mob, the pounding outside the doors seemed to grow louder. I remember thinking it sounded like the mob had a battering ram. Their jeering violent shouts and chants were echoing off the marble hallways outside the chamber.

The House chaplain, Margaret Kibben, went to one of the microphones and began to pray: While you prepare, I will pray. Almighty God, we ask that you provide peace if you can. You have been our ever defender and strength. We call upon you today that even as we walk this tough path. Each one of us has an element of fear and anxiety. May we lay it down before your feet, God, that you will spare us from it.

In the gallery above the House floor, Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger, was doing just that. He later described instinctively shifting into combat mode and going through a mental checklist to secure the perimeter and get the dozen or so fellow members seated up there with him into a small group in a defensive position.

People died on January 6 because of Donald Trump’s lies.

WHILE THE HOUSE CHAMBER WAS being evacuated, Mike Pence and his family were rushed from his office on the Senate side of the Capitol into a basement garage. 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 to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth! In his speech on the Ellipse that morning, Donald Trump had told the angry crowd that Mike Pence could secure Trump’s victory. Now, as the rioters were invading the Capitol, Trump was telling them that Mike Pence had refused to do what they all demanded.

Our investigation later demonstrated how this tweet further inflamed the violent mob, causing rioters both inside and outside the Capitol to surge forward.

Markwayne Mullin walked up to the dais a short while later. He told me he had just come from the “triage room,” where they were bringing police officers wounded in the day’s combat with the Trump mob. He said it was devastating. Scores of law-enforcement officers had been seriously injured.

Mullin described their injuries in detail: broken bones, deep lacerations, an officer whose eye had been gouged by the mob, others who had been attacked with bear spray, pepper spray, and other irritants. The ongoing violence had blocked ambulances from reaching the casualties and transporting them to hospitals. It was sickening.

I thought maybe if they heard about what was going on, about the violent attacks on police officers, they would withdraw their obj...

I knew of a number of Republican members who shied away from a yes vote very late in the day. A couple of weeks later, in one of our House Republican Conference meetings, a prominent member who had not voted to impeach suggested that a “few dozen” more Republicans were struggling with the issue and were ready to vote to impeach. In the end, 10 Republicans did.

President George Washington had handed power to President John Adams, but this was the first time power had passed from one party to another. And those watching understood what a momentous—indeed, miraculous—thing it was for that to happen absent “confusion, villainy, and bloodshed.” Until January 2021, every American president had fulfilled his solemn obligation to safeguard the peaceful transfer of power.

He has already attacked the judiciary repeatedly, and ignored the rulings of scores of courts. He knows that judicial rulings have force only if the executive branch enforces them. So he won’t.