Liz Cheney Recalls “Chilling” Moment She Learned of Trump’s Plan to Overthrow Election

Liz Cheney is dishing everything Donald Trump–related in a new book—including details on a phone call that unraveled a “chilling” plan to stop Vice President Mike Pence from ratifying the election, mere days before January 6.

“I had heard, obviously, there had been talk about having these electors meet, but it wasn’t clear to me what the contours of this particular part of the plan were until I got onto that phone call,” Cheney said on The Rachel Maddow Show.

“Listening to them describe how these fake electors would be used, and the fact that they anticipated that Vice President Pence was going to use them to count legitimate electors, was certainly a moment of intense concern,” she added.

As Cheney tells it, she “ran” to the Office of the Parliamentarian of the House to inform them, but little could be done by then.

“If you’re in a joint session of Congress, you’re not in a position where there are a lot of legislative steps that you can take except to basically move to adjourn, so it was a very dangerous and chilling moment,” Cheney said. “I learned later through the investigation that Vice President Pence and his counsel were having discussions with the Senate parliamentarian and that the vice president ultimately, of course, did his duty bravely.”

Cheney’s latest book, Oath and Honor, comes paired with the news that the former Wyoming representative is weighing the possibility of running as a third-party candidate in the 2024 presidential election—a choice that could skim some moderate Republican votes away from Trump.

“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney told The Washington Post. “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”

During an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Cheney warned that the U.S. would be “sleepwalking into dictatorship” if it chose to reelect Trump for a second term. She has also come down on Speaker Mike Johnson’s new role as the highest serving member of the House, noting that she would not want to see Johnson in a leadership position come 2025.

“What I learned was he was willing to do things he knew to be wrong in order to placate Donald Trump,” Cheney told Maddow on Monday. “And again, a situation where you have a speaker of the House, who … so clearly set aside what he knew to be the facts, what he knew to be the law, what he knew to be our obligations under the Constitution in order to try to help Donald Trump in his efforts in 2020.”