Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

The period of transition from one administration to the next is a time of heightened potential vulnerability for the United States. What happens at the Pentagon is especially important. Ensuring stability and a smooth transition is crucial. 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.

Congress does not have the authority to undo an election by refusing to count state-certified electoral votes. Period. As the Constitution requires, Congress’s role in this specific context is ministerial only: Congress counts the certified electoral votes. 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.…”

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.

The question for every one of us who serves in Congress, for every elected official across this great nation—indeed, for every American—is this: Will we adhere to the rule of law? Will we respect the rulings of our courts? Will we preserve the peaceful transition of power? Or will we be so blinded by partisanship that we throw away the miracle of America? Do we hate our political adversaries more than we love our country and revere our Constitution? I pray that that is not the case. I pray that we all remember, Our children are watching. As we carry out this solemn and sacred duty entrusted to us, our children will know who stood for truth, and they will inherit the nation we hand to them—a republic, if we can keep it.

The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way. Those loyalists and lawyers who step up to help Trump unravel our republic would do so knowing that they would be pardoned. That they would face no risk of prosecution. And Donald Trump would not hesitate to pardon himself. Any who step forward to oppose Trump will face the types of threats, retaliation, and violence we have already seen—but this time with the full power of an unconstrained American president behind them.

“May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” Adams knew that the character of our leaders mattered. He and our other founders knew that the institutions of self-government could not sustain and protect themselves. It would fall to the people of this nation—and to our elected leaders—to do that.

As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.

Those words—We the People—describe our power and our responsibility. In the era of Trump, certain members of Congress and other Trump enablers—many of whom carry the Constitution in their pocket but seem never to have read it—have attempted to hijack this phrase, to claim it gives them authority to subvert the rule of law or overturn the results of elections. They have preyed on the patriotism of millions of Americans. They are working to return to office the man responsible for January 6. We the people must stop them. We are the only thing that can stop them. This is more important than partisan politics. Every one of us—Republican, Democrat, Independent—must work and vote together to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled, and collaborated with him are defeated. This is the cause of our time.