Ronny Jackson - Holding the Line: A Lifetime of Defending Democracy and American Values

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-63758-020-2

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-021-9

Holding the Line:

A Lifetime of Defending Democracy and American Values

2022 by Ronny Jackson

All Rights Reserved

Cover photo by White House Photographer Myles Cullen

Cover design by Cody Corcoran

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations

are portrayed to the best of the authors memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Dedicated to my wife, Jane.

My friend, my inspiration, my partner, my soulmate, my protector, and my biggest fan.

The only person who really knows me and the one person I can always count on no matter what happens.

I love you!

Contents

B y the morning of January 6, I had already decided how I was going to vote on the House floor later that day. I had made up my mind. I wasnt one of those people on the fence. I was going to object to the certification of the Electoral College votes.

The Constitution says that the state legislatures for each state will determine the conduct of the election. Thats it. The state legislatures. And in my judgment, that is not what happened in the 2020 election.

You had everyone from governors and secretaries of state down to county clerks, judges, and other election officials who had decided weeks before the November 3 election that they were going to change election laws in their states. In my mind, this was specifically done so that they could justify unsolicited mail-in ballots, knowing that they could harvest ballots from that point forward and manipulate the vote to win the electionwhich is exactly what happened.

When I went to sleep on election night, President Trump was winning handily. He was up big in states like Florida and Texas, as well as other traditionally blue states that President Trump had won four years earlier: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. So when I went to bed that night, it was obvious to me that he was going to win the election.

Then, in the wee hours of the night, the ballots started coming in from everywhere. Truckloads of them were delivered in certain Democrat-controlled cities, and they were counted with little to no oversight. Suddenly, the vote started changing, and Biden started taking the lead in some of these places. From that point forward, I felt confident that there was some level of fraud involved that needed to immediately be investigated. As the weeks and months have passed, it is even more obvious to me that that was the case.

I was hoping the fraud would be uncovered and the final vote tallies would be corrected, but it pretty quickly became obvious that it wasnt going to happen that way. Once the liberal press called the election for Biden, there was no way they were going back. They were no longer interested in the truth, and they wanted the American people to simply drink their Kool-Aid and move on.

Even some Republicans who had always publicly supported the president started to waiver. These were the Republicans who liked the way things were before Trump arrived at the White House. They thrived in the swamp, and they liked the way the swamp operated because they understood it.

Then Mr. Trump came to Washington and turned everything upside down.

Old power players from both the Left and the Right came together after the 2020 election, and it was obvious that they were covering up and undermining any efforts to investigate what really happened.

On January 6, I knew there werent going to be enough votes to overturn the election. The Democrats had a majority in both the House and the Senate, and there were plenty of Republicans who had already made their mind up to certify the vote. None of that mattered to me, however. I still had an obligation to let my constituents know that even if the vote was not overturned, their voices would be heard through me, their representative in the peoples house. I would do the right thing and let the rest of America know that those in the Thirteenth Congressional District of Texas were NOT okay with this. This was not acceptable and will never happen again. In addition, I felt it was my constitutional duty to oppose if I thought the votes werent legitimate and were unconstitutional, and I did.

Some people in my district thought the election would be overturned, but I had to be realistic. I was one of those people who, every time I had a conversation with my constituents, said, Look, we can pray for a miracle. Maybe something that we dont know about will come out between now and the sixth, and it will change the math. But right now, the math in the House and the Senate says this election is not going to be overturned. That being said, its still important to have our voices heard and to be engaged in the process.

Based on principle, it was vital to make sure the rest of the country knew that in Texas, we felt like we were disenfranchised by the fraud that we believe took place in the election. For me, this wasnt about overturning the election to give it back to President Trump, although I would have been very pleased with that outcome. But when it came time to vote, I thought it was the right thing to do because I believed the Constitution had been violated by the states in question, and it was my duty as a representative in Congress to say so.

To their credit, Republican leadership in the House did not tell anybody how to vote on this issue. They had gotten the Republican Conference together for a meeting the day before the vote, and it was very productive. Members got up, representing both sides of the issue, making arguments for why we should or shouldnt certify the vote. Both sides made passionate arguments, but I felt like there was only one legitimate constitutional way forward. I felt like the right answer was to contest the certification of the electoral vote from the states in question.

I thought leaders McCarthy and Scalise did a great job not strong-arming anybody to vote a certain way. They understood that this was one of the most significant votes that any of us would ever make. Both of them said that theyd been in Congress for many years, and this was the most consequential vote theyd ever personally been confronted with. This carried the significance of something like voting to declare war. Everyone needed to approach this with the utmost seriousness.

They said, Vote with your conscience. Vote for your district. Everybodys going to do what they feel like theyve got to do, but were not going to attack each other, and were going to respect each others votes.

I walked out of that meeting thinking: If another member of my party, even a colleague from Texas, decides to vote in a different manner than I do, Im not going to criticize them. Im going to try to respect the fact that they voted the way they did, and I am going to assume they voted their conscience and the way their constituents expected them to. Thats what I was doing, and I would expect that from them regarding my vote.

***

On the morning of January 6, the president was supposed to speak at a rally on the Ellipse near the White House. I had several constituents that were close friends of mine who were planning to be there, so I thought I would go down there and say hi and see what was going on. I also figured I would see a lot of friends from the White House Military Office, Secret Service, and President Trumps staff who I had worked closely with over the past few years. He was scheduled to speak at eleven in the morning, but he was running late. A member of my staff and I went down there, but it took much longer to get there than I anticipated due to all the closed streets. We got there just before eleven oclock. In the crowd that morning were thousands of people wearing Trump hats, carrying American flags and Trump flags, and all kinds of other patriotic and Trump paraphernalia. It was an incredibly peaceful and festive atmosphere. Everybody was in a great mood. People had their kids with them and were soaking up the atmosphere and the nice weather.