'The Moment Really Is Now'

SHE LOST HER SEAT IN CONGRESS AFTER DENOUNCING DONALD TRUMP'S ROLE IN THE JAN. 6 RIOT. NOW THE LIFELONG REPUBLICAN AND MOM OF FIVE SHARES HER 'HEARTBREAK'-AND HER HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

-  MICHELLE TAUBER

Liz Cheney was elected to Congress in 2016, the same year Donald Trump won the presidency. In the years that followed, the lifelong Republican—whose father is former Vice President Dick Cheney, 82—voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time. But in 2020 Cheney, 57, broke from her party to urge Trump to respect the electoral process before leading the House investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. As a result, the mother of five lost her seat in Congress but found an urgent new mission: fighting for her kids’ future. In writing her new memoir Oath and Honor, “I felt it was really important for people to know what had happened inside the halls of Congress,” Cheney tells People. “It’s a cautionary tale.”

Members of Congress pledge an oath to the Constitution. What did that mean to you?

When it came to the vote to impeach Donald Trump [after the Jan. 6 riot], there were people who said to me, “How can you impeach a president of your own party? How can you vote to impeach a president when 70 percent of the people of the state that I represented, Wyoming, voted for him in the election?” And it was so clear to me that your oath and your duty to the Constitution has to come before any partisan politics, but it turned out that not that many people felt that way.

How did it feel to realize that most colleagues within your own party did not share your view?