Former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig on Thursday will tell the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that the Jan. 6 attack was “a war for America’s democracy” and one “irresponsibly instigated” by then-President Donald Trump.
Luttig will tell the committee about his role as an informal adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was facing pressure from Trump and his allies to refuse to certify the election results in his capacity as president of the Senate. Pence declined to do so, citing his lack of constitutional authority to reject state election results unilaterally.
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In Luttig’s prepared opening statement, reported by CNN, he said Jan. 6 was “the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead.”
“Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost,” the statement added.
Luttig, a Republican, was an informal adviser to Pence about claims made from some Trump allies and the former president himself that Pence could single-handedly block certification of the 2020 election. Constitutional scholars before and since the events of that day have said the vice president lacks such authority.
“It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the President of the United States at that perilous moment in history,” the statement said. “Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis.”
Luttig condemned rioters who called that day for Pence to be hanged and those who called him “cowardly” for “refusing the president’s lawless entreaties that his Vice President declare their president reelected, against the will of the American People, though he had lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote for the presidency.”
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“There were many cowards on the battlefield on January 6,” Luttig said. “The Vice President was not among them.”
Thursday’s hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern time.
