My daughter the architect gave me a book for Christmas: Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney. Since I follow events in D.C. through the L.A. Times, PBS, NBC, and CNN, I thought I already knew the story of January 6. I thought this was just one more account of a rally that got out of hand. I even laid the book aside. It’s 368 pages.
Boy was I wrong. This book is a prizewinner, with blow-by-blow descriptions and granular detail.
On November 7, the networks still had not made their calls on the 2020 election results, but Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani staged a bizarre press conference at a Philadelphia landscaping firm claiming voter fraud. On Monday (while the nation was distracted by Rudy’s hair dye and his boss going berserk: “FIX,” “STEAL,” “GREATEST ROBBERY IN HISTORY”) Donald Trump fired his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and placed four little-known yes men at the top of DOD. 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.
That was the beginning of 26 days of maneuvers by Donald to reverse his defeat.
On November 17, he fired Chris Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security. Krebs had contradicted Trump’s claims of vote fraud, saying, “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Despite the fact that there is no constitutional role for the president in counting votes or certifying elections, Trump telephoned state officials to change vote counts. He ordered up a phony letter from the Attorney General asking the same. Trump lawyers filed 60 lawsuits claiming election fraud. Trump personally badgered Mike Pence to stop the official January 6 electoral vote count. But none of his schemes worked. No evidence of fraud was uncovered, nothing.
So, beginning December 19, Donald incited armed thugs to crash Congress on January 6. Violence worked. Hand-to-hand combat took over the capitol. These were not tourists. They chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” Congress recessed until police reinforcements saved the day.
Cheney has it all.
