Liz Cheney Quotes

A little over a year ago, I received a note from a Gold Star father. He said to me, "Standing up for truth honors all who gave all," and I have thought of his words every single day since then. I've thought of them because they are a reminder of how we must all conduct ourselves. We must conduct ourselves in a way that is worthy of the men and women who wear the uniform of this nation. And in particular, of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. This is not a game. Every one of us must be committed to the eternal defense of this miraculous experiment called America and at the heart of our democratic process — our elections. They are the foundational principle of our Constitution.

We really are in God's country. And it's wonderful to welcome so many here. I want to say first of all, a special thanks to every member of Team Cheney, who is here in the audience, and to tell you our work is far from over. Among the many, many blessings that we have as Americans, and as individuals and as human beings, the blessing of your family is surely the most important. And so I want to thank all my family and pay a special tribute to those who are here with us tonight.

In this room, in 1918, the Committee on Woman Suffrage convened to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote. This room is full of history, and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for. Ronald Reagan’s great ally, Margaret Thatcher, said this: "Let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it." Let me assure every one of you this: Our committee understands the gravity of this moment, the consequences for our nation. We have much work yet to do, and we will see you all in September.

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark, unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity, no nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible. And every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

In late November of 2020, while President Trump was still pursuing lawsuits, many of us were urging him to put any genuine evidence of fraud forward in the courts and to accept the outcome of those cases. As January 6th approached, I circulated a memo to my Republican colleagues explaining why our congressional proceedings to count electoral votes could not be used to change the outcome of the election. But what I did not know at the time was that President Trump’s own advisors, also Republicans, also conservatives, including his White House counsel, his Justice Department, his campaign officials, they were all telling him almost exactly the same thing I was telling my colleagues: There was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the election outcome. Our courts had ruled. It was over. Now we know that it didn’t matter what any of us said because Donald Trump wasn’t looking for the right answer legally or the right answer factually. He was looking for a way to remain in office.

Here is the worst part: Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on January 6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution. He has purposely created the false impression that America is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines, or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly injected into our election system, or that ballot workers have secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them. All complete nonsense. We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

President Trump declared victory when his own campaign advisors told him he had absolutely no basis to do so. What the new Steve Bannon audio demonstrates is that Donald Trump’s plan to falsely claim victory in 2020 – no matter what the facts actually were – was premeditated. Perhaps worse, Donald Trump believed he could convince his voters to buy it, whether he had any actual evidence of fraud or not. And this same thing continued to occur from Election Day onward until January 6th. Donald Trump was confident that he could convince his supporters that the election was stolen no matter how many lawsuits he lost, and he lost scores of them. He was told over and over again, in immense detail, that the election was not stolen, there was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn’t matter. Donald Trump was confident he could persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said, no matter how outlandish, and ultimately that they could be summoned to Washington to help him remain president for another term. As we showed you last week, even President Trump’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, knew they had no actual evidence to demonstrate the election was stolen. Again, it didn’t matter.

This committee has shown you the testimony of dozens of Republican witnesses, those who served President Trump loyally for years. The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies; it is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family. They have come forward and they have told the American people the truth. And for those of you who seem to think the evidence would be different if Republican Leader McCarthy had not withdrawn his nominees from this committee, let me ask you this: Do you really think Bill Barr is such a delicate flower that he would wilt under cross examination? Pat Cipillone? Eric Herschmann? Jeff Rosen? Richard Donoghue? Of course they aren’t. None of our witnesses are.

Let me again thank our witnesses today. We have seen bravery and honor in these hearings, and Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, both of you will be remembered for that, as will Cassidy Hutchinson. She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans. She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage, and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah and our other witnesses, including officer Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, are an inspiration to American women and to American girls. We owe a debt to all of those who have and will appear here.

Attacks against our democratic process, and the Rule of Law, empower our adversaries, and feed Communist propaganda: that American democracy is a failure. We must speak the truth. Our election was not stolen, and America has not failed. I received a message last week from a Gold Star father, who said "Standing up for the truth honors all who gave all." We must all strive to be worthy of the sacrifice of those who have died for our freedom. They are the patriots. Katharine Lee Bates described in the words of America the Beautiful when she wrote "O beautiful, for heroes proved, in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life." Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, this is at the heart of what our Oath requires: that we love our country more. That we love her so much that we will stand above politics to defend her. That we will do everything in our power to protect our Constitution, and our freedom that has been paid for by the blood of so many. We must love America so much that we will never yield in her defense. That is our duty.

Our duty is clear: every one of us who has sworn the Oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the Rule of Law, and joins the former President's crusade to undermine our democracy.

I am a conservative Republican, and the most conservative of conservative principles is reverence for the Rule of Law. The Electoral College has voted. More than 60 state and federal courts including multiple judges the former president appointed have rejected his claims. The Trump Department of Justice investigated the former president's claims of widespread fraud and found no evidence to support them. The election is over. That is the Rule of Law. That is our constitutional process. Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution.

I rise to discuss freedom, and our Constitutional duty to protect it. … I have been privileged to see firsthand how powerful and how fragile freedom is. Twenty-eight years ago, I stood outside a polling place, a schoolhouse in western Kenya. Soldiers had chased away people who were lined up to vote. A few hours later, they came streaming back in, risking further attack, undaunted in their determination to exercise their right to vote. In 1992, I sat across a table from a young mayor in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and I listened to him talk of his dream of liberating his nation from Communism. Years later, for his dedication to the cause of freedom, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by Vladimir Putin's thugs. In Warsaw, in 1990, I listened to a young Polish woman tell me that her greatest fear was that people would forget: they would forget what it was like to live under Soviet domination, that they would forget the price of freedom. Three men — an immigrant who escaped Castro's totalitarian regime, a young man who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and became his country's Minister of Defense, and a dissident who spent years in the Soviet Gulag — have all told me it was the miracle of America, captured in the words of President Ronald Reagan, that inspired them. And, I have seen the power of faith and freedom. I listened to Pope John Paul II speak to thousands in Nairobi in 1985, and 19 years later, I watched that same Pope take my father's hands, look in his eyes, and say "God bless America." God has blessed America, Mr. Speaker, but our freedom only survives if we protect it. If we honor our Oath, taken before God in this chamber, to support and defend the Constitution. If we recognize threats to freedom when they arise. Today, we face a threat America has never seen before: a former President, who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election, has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence. Millions of Americans have been misled by the former President. They have heard only his words, but not the truth, as he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of doubt about whether democracy really works at all.

Our duty today is to our country and our children and our constitution. We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion, and every American is entitled to those answers — so we can act now to protect our republic. So this afternoon, I am offering this resolution: that the committee direct the chairman to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from Donald John Trump in connection with the January 6th attack on the United States Capital.

At the very outset of our hearings, we described several elements of President Trump's multipart plan to overturn the 2020 election. Our hearings have now covered all but one of those elements, an organized campaign to persuade millions of Americans of a falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen by widespread fraud; a corrupt effort to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral votes; an effort to corrupt the US Department of Justice; efforts to pressure state election officials and legislators to change state election results; a scheme to create and submit fake electoral slates from multiple states. And today, you saw how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington for January 6th, and then knowing that that mob was armed, directed that mob to the United States Capitol. Every one of these elements of the planning for January 6th is an independently serious matter. They were all ultimately focused on overturning the election, and they all have one other thing in common. Donald Trump participated in each, substantially and personally. He oversaw or directed the activity of those involved.