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Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig on Thursday told the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that had Vice President Mike Pence acquiesced to President Donald Trump’s demand to declare him the victor of the 2020 election despite his loss, it would have prompted “the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.”
MICHAEL LUTTIG TO PRAISE MIKE PENCE OVER JAN. 6 CONDUCT AND REBUKE DONALD TRUMP
Luttig was an informal adviser to Pence in the closing days of the Trump administration, while the vice president faced 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.
He told the committee that “I would have laid my body across the road” before he let Pence make a decision based on false claims about his constitutional authority.
Luttig told the committee that no historic or legal precedent “would support the possibility” of the vice president having that authority.
Had Pence obeyed the orders from Trump, Luttig said, “and declared Donald Trump the next president of the United States, notwithstanding that President Trump had lost the Electoral College vote, as well as the popular vote, in the 2020 presidential election,” it would have “plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis.”
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“In my view, and I’m only one man, it would have been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic,” he said.
Luttig, a Republican, offered testimony that was at times halting or long-winded but was forceful in his view that such an action would have defied both historic and legal norms.
