many of whom had an epiphany on january 7th, 2021 after they saw the hate and the destruction and the death their lies wrought and who just as quickly lost their clarity and their principles when trump phoenix-like rose from the ashes. cheney has a brand new book that has quickly become a best-seller. it's a stark warning to the nation, and she says ignore it and her at our democracy's peril. joining me now is former republican congresswoman liz cheney. her new book is "oath and honor: a memoir and a warning." it's very briskly written and a great historical record. but it's a good read. >> thank you. >> also. so congratulations. the book opens two days after the 2020 election. you're talking to then leader kevin mccarthy. he tells you donald trump, quote, knows it over and he needs time to, quote, go through the stages of grief. and then almost immediately you see this on fox news. >> president trump won this election. so everyone who's listening, do not be quiet. do not be -- do not be silent about this. we cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. >> this is a theme throughout the book. so much so i could fill an hour of examples of kevin mccarthy saying something to you that is rational and reality-based and then going on tv and doing the exact opposite. for example, saying he's going to withdraw objections to the electoral count and then doing the exact opposite. you go so far as to at one point donald trump uses a word, a euphemism -- a feline euphemism to describe kevin mccarthy. and you agree with him, with donald trump. but it's worse than that because that cravenness in your view, it really put -- >> what i can tell you is it became very clear that when you're the leader and each time you have a choice to make and you decide that you're going to do the wrong thing you lead the whole conference in that direction. now, there were people that were very certainly willing to go with him. but you know, situations for example like when the issue of objecting to electoral votes came up and you had these freshman members who had just been elected. they hadn't been in office more than a couple of days. and they were being asked to cast this crucially important vote. are you going to object to electoral votes? it was clear there was no basis in the constitution for them to do so. and i had a couple of them tell me that kevin was meeting with them privately telling them this isn't that big a deal, really, the easy political vote is just to go ahead and object. and when you think about the damage that does when it's the leader and he's actually telling people don't worry essentially about your constitutional obligations, here's the political expedient path to take. and of course we saw where that led republicans through the course of the months leading up to january 6th and afterwards. >> and a lot of them were led by the nonsense being spewed by these attorneys, rudy giuliani, sidney powell, jenna ellis. there has been some admission they were wrong. at least jenna ellis, who said this in a georgia court. >> i endeavored to represent my client to the best of my ability. i relied on others including lawyers with many more years of experience than i to provide me with true and reliable information. what i did not do but should have done, your honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true. >> she talks as if she's like an 8-year-old. she's a grown adult. but still, at least she did that. sidney powell, rudy giuliani still have not admitted their actions were wrong. what do you think justice would look like for these attorneys that so misled the nation? >> yeah, well, i think you've seen in both of those cases, in the case of rudy giuliani, his license to practice law has been suspended. i mean, sidney powell's assertion in one of the dominion cases was that no reasonable person would actually believe the claims that she was making. >> which is true, by the way. >> but an interesting defense for her to be making. and i think it's really a situation where people ought to imagine that if donald trump were to have a second term these are the kind of unethical lawyers that he would have around him, those who are willing to help him violate the law. and i think that's something people need to keep in mind as they look at 2024. he would not have around him the kinds of people like pat cipollone, for example, jeff rosen, rich donoghue, the people who actually stopped him from doing even more damage this last time around. >> but do you think having their licenses to practice law taken away, do you think these slaps on the wrist they've gotten is enough? do you think there need to be more serious charges? >> i think it's very important -- you know, we've looked at what the department of justice, how they began their investigations around january 6th. they began with, you know, in some ways the foot soldiers. they began with the people who invaded the capitol. and i think it's very important that they now have expanded that, that that's got to go all the way up to the top. accountability is really crucially important. without accountability for everybody including donald trump, including those lawyers around him, those others around him who helped him with his plot to overturn the election, without that accountability you can be confident this is going toe happen again and again. >> i think it's very likely that in a second trump term we would see a leadership role of some sort for texas attorney general ken paxton. and you might recall, i know you recall, on december 7th paxton petitioned the supreme court to challenge the election results in a number of states that biden won. >> yeah. >> in response then congressman mike johnson, who was a friend and fellow colleague of yours, he was in your incoming freshman class. he sent an e-mail to house republicans that read, "president trump called me this morning to express his great appreciation for our effort to file an amicus brief in the texas case. he specifically asked me to contact all republican members of the house and senate today and request that all join on ourto our brief. trump said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review." he was pushing this forward. he was misrepresenting actually what the amicus brief said. do you think that mike johnson -- i know that you liked him at the time. do you think he actually believed what was in that amicus brief? >> i think that he was aware that what he was doing was wrong. and that was both with respect to the amicus brief as well as with respect to the objections and the assertions he was making. he had this stunning sort of claim that he kept making which was that because we are convinced, those are the words he used, because congress in his phrase was convinced that states had violated the constitution we had the authority to throw out electoral votes. you know, that is a stunning assertion to make and it ignores the rulings of the courts and it ignores the certification process that went on in each of those states. with the amicus brief he kept assuring members that this really was not a brief that was making claims about the facts, but in fact it was making claims about the facts and it was making claims that had already been heard and rejected by courts in each of these states, by federal courts and state courts. and so while each member of congress is obviously responsible for anything they sign and they all, you know, should have been reading that brief, the fact that johnson was, you know, again and again claiming in this case knowledge of facts about irregularities in the election, you know, about which he had no basis himself to know, and i think that that raised serious ethical questions and of course the court within a couple of hours of receiving the amicus brief declined to hear the case. >> he's now the speaker of the house. he's number two in line for the presidency. do you think that our democracy is at risk with mike johnson as speaker of the house? >> i do think that we have to be very concerned about the fact that he has shown a willingness to take steps that he knows to be wrong in order to placate donald trump. that was the thing that surprised me the most i think. i had not understood that that was mike's character. i thought that he was a man of character and a man of honor. but when i watched again and again and again throughout this period his willingness, you know, essentially to do things without any basis in law, and it wasn't just me. i talk in the book about kevin mccarthy's own chief legal counsel who herself confronted johnson about the flaws in his arguments and she e-mailed me and said he knows he's wrong. and yet he was continuing to do it anyway. so when you have somebody with that approach who's the vice chair of the republican conference, you know, you can make the case it's not as dangerous. i was obviously concerned enough about it that i wrote these parts of the book before he was speaker. when you have somebody who's willing to do that who's speaker of the house, it really does i think present a significant threat. and you imagine january 6th, 2025 when the new house is counting electoral votes. imagine the possibility that the election gets thrown into the ho house. and i think it's important he not be the speaker that day. >> it's pretty amazing, actually, because other than kevin mccarthy it's probably mike johnson that you write about the most in terms of members of congress that were collaborators, co-conspirators with donald trump. and you obviously wrote it before he was speaker of the house. that shows how much you were concerned about the role he played. >> there is one sound bite from this week that congresswoman cheney says she wants every american to see and to hear. plus coming up, what she says about the power of fox and its influence on politics. stay with us. and we're back with more of our big interview with former vice chair of the january 6th committee, liz cheney. >> looking forward to a potential second trump term, during that period between donald trump losing and joe biden becoming president at the inauguration, kash patel, who served on trump's national security council, became chief of staff in the pentagon. >> yeah. >> and earlier this week he said this on steve bannon's podcast. take a listen. >> we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about american citizens, who helped joe biden rig presidential elections. we're going to come after you. whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. >> so patel said he would follow the facts and the law. but this is a preview for what would happen in a second trump term. axios is reporting today that a trump cabinet would likely include patel, stephen miller, steve bannon, and others. what do you think when you hear that? what do you think when you hear about a second trump term? >> look, i hope every american watches that clip that you just showed because if you imagine the people who are on the absolute fringe, the people who are the least responsible, people who may well be unstable, and you imagine giving them supreme and ultimate power, that's what donald trump would do. he would take somebody like kash patel, making assertions like that, and give him authority -- i don't know. they're talking about kash as the head of the cia potentially. now, one of the things we also know is that donald trump tried to appoint him to other positions before he made him chief of staff at the pentagon and, you know, reportedly the cia director then, gina haspel, threatened to resign. that's the only reason that kash didn't end up at the cia earlier. but these are people who have no -- there's no fitness for any appointed position. they have no place exercising any kind of authority. but those are the types of people who would be around donald trump if he were re-elected. >> i don't think the american people truly have an idea how close we came to complete anarchy and potentially a complete erosion of democracy. in the days before january 6th you are worrying, as are many republicans and many in the media, about whether vice president mike pence is going to try to stop the certification of the election results. and the truth is even though mike pence did a heroic thing and did the right thing at the end of the day, it was an open question. it was an open question until that morning. former speaker paul ryan texts you that he's worried that pence is going to break. and just to remind everybody, here's what pence had said down in georgia before the special senate elections earlier that week. >> i share the concerns of millions of americans about voting irregularities. and i promise you come this wednesday we'll have our day in congress. we'll hear the objections. we'll hear the evidence. >> i mean, he did the right thing in the end. he deserves to be praised for that. but i mean, i understand why paul ryan was worried. >> yeah. i would say a couple of things. first of all, we know now from the work of the select committee, for example, and the testimony of people like greg jacob, who was his counsel, that the vice president a number of times made clear to donald trump that he could not take the step that trump wanted him to take. and the vice president pence divides up his authority -- he, you know, was clear with president trump that he as vice president did not have the authority to reject electoral votes. but he does argue that the house, that the congress has the authority to reject electoral votes. and i think he's clearly wrong on that second part. but you know, there's a phone call that i was on on january 4th where for the first time i understood -- and i'd been invited to this call because i was on a list of zblsh they forgot to take you off the list. >> i assume that's what happened. and that was the first time i understood the details of this plan to have vice president pence actually reject legitimate votes, to use these fake electors as an excuse to reject the votes. and that was a terrifying moment. i did not know on that day, you know, that the vice president and his counsel had at the same time been talking to the senate parliamentarian and working through language that would make clear he couldn't do that. but it really sort of brought home how -- what a close-run thing it was. and i didn't know if we were going to have fake electors carried into the chamber of the house, fake electoral votes. so that whole day of trying to understand exactly how we could stop it if in fact the vice president was going to do the wrong thing was a sickening day in many ways. >> and look, if the next time it's vice president kristi noem or j.d. vance or tucker carlson, who knows? >> well, and we also know now that apparently the vice president considered not even presiding that day. chuck grassley suggested he was going to be the chair. >> right. >> and that -- you know, it could have been a very serious -- much more serious constitutional crisis. >> there's a moment during the capitol attack when jim jordan tries to help you saying, quote, we need to get the ladies off the aisle of the house floor. you say to him, "get away from me. you f-ing did this." i assume you didn't say fing. what was interesting about this moment to me is first of all he's acting like this big strong man who's going to protect you and he's being sexist. but also in addition to the e m actually the weaker person. that's the irony of the sexism. he's the weak one in that dynamic. you've been strong. he's been weak. and that must have been doubly infuriating in terms of the sexism. >> it was. and there's another thing too, which is what did jim know? what did he know? you know, it was clear by that point that these lies about the election, the lies that trump was telling, those were the lies that had brought these people to washington. jim had clearly been one of the leading figures in the house in spreading those lies. >> we still don't know. >> we don't know everything that he did. and i think he owes the american people the answers to that. he of course refused to comply with the select committee subpoena. but what did he know? why was he so concerned about danger, about getting me off the aisle? and then as you point out it was certainly ridiculous. >> ashley babbit was shot at 2:44 on january 6th. a defensible shot according to mark wynn mullen and other members of congress who were not so willing to say that publicly after it was very clear that donald trump was still ascendant. you described that shortly after a white house staffer handed trump a note that said one civilian gunshot wound to chest at door of house chamber. so trump knew pretty quickly about babbiting death, and yet he didn't call for peace on twitter for another 30 minutes and didn't ask the rioters to go home for another 90 minutes even though he knew a civilian, likely one of his own supporters, had been killed. >> yeah. so i think this is a really important point that sometimes gets lost, that the select committee had testimony, and this is in our report, that there was a white house employee who saw the note sitting on the dining room table in front of trump. so trump's in the dining room. he's been handed a note that there had been a gunshot wound to a civilian at the door to the house chamber. >> to the chest. >> to the chest. right. and he's watching the violence on television. and he won't tell the mob to stop. so i think for all of the politicization that we've seen, all the whitewashing that goes on about january 6th, that fundamental fact of how depraved as a human being you have to be to sit there and watch this unfold with glee and not take steps to tell these people to go home. >> it's unbelievable. you write about fox, the tv channel, a lot. network. they were a huge part of how these lies obviously spread across the country. they're a huge part of why january 6th happened. they're again today challenging this book, challenging your warnings about how if trump gets elected again he may never step down if he wins. take a listen to what bret baier had to say earlier this week about your warning. >> we saw four years of donald trump. were there issues that crossed lines? yes. they raised all kinds of questions. but did people for the most part live their lives and were there checks and balances? yes, there were. would it be a dictatorship that doesn't step down from office? it's hard for me to back that up as of yet. >> he and his colleague laura ingraham tweeted asking how you think trump would end elections. quote, is he going to send out a tweet? does he have a hidden army we haven't seen? what on earth is she thinking? >> well, i would say first in response to bret, he already tried to seize power once. so you know, it shouldn't be hard for anybody to imagine that he will do it again. that's exactly what he was doing on january 6th. and no president has ever done that before. with respect to sort of the mechanics of how he would do this, donald trump will refuse to obey the rulings of the courts. he's already made clear that he will not abide by the rulings of the courts. and if you think about that in the context of elections, you know, he can -- and he's also frankly already suggested postponing elections. but imagine a situation, for example, where he concocts an emergency where he works with state legislators or republican officials in the states to suggest there's been some sort of emergency that will prevent the holding of elections in those states. people say, well, the courts will step in. federal courts will issue an order suggesting that these states have to comply. they've got to go forward with elections. or they have to certify the legitimate winner. donald trump won't enf