Former federal judge warns of danger to American democracy

J. Michael Luttig, former U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Fourth Circuit, arrives to testify earlier than the House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

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J. Michael Luttig, former U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Fourth Circuit, arrives to testify earlier than the House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

During Thursday’s Jan. 6 committee listening to, retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig issued a dire warning to the nation. Luttig, who suggested former Vice President Mike Pence, stated that 17 months after the riot on the U.S. Capitol, “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a transparent and current danger to American democracy.”

Luttig stated the United States is at a crossroads related to the one the nation confronted in the course of the Civil War, and he stated America wants assist.

Luttig was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush and labored in each the Bush and Reagan administrations. He stated in his written testimony that the U.S. is in a “struggle” over the nation’s democracy and that “solely the occasion that instigated this struggle can finish it,” calling on the Republican Party to begin a reconciliation course of.

Speaking to NPR on Saturday, Luttig reiterated his message that lawmakers should start speaking to one another as “fellow Americans which have a shared future and shared hopes and desires for America.” But Republicans should begin the method, he added.

Luttig spoke with NPR’s All Things Considered concerning the odds of members of the Republican Party beginning these good-faith conversations, pro-Trump candidates presently working for workplace, and whether or not the Jan. 6 committee hearings may help shut the divide.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Interview Highlights

Do you assume that there’s a significant constituency inside your occasion, the Republican Party that’s, keen to have good-faith conversations about this? And if that’s the case the place are they?

As of the day that I testified, no, there are none, and there have not been for these couple of years. I’m not a politician, I do not do politics, however that is what I suggest occur. And it is with my fervent hope that some quantity of our elected leaders, not less than, will hear the phrases that I spoke on Thursday and perceive what I stated, which is that they’ve an obligation, a excessive obligation, that they undertake by oath to act within the curiosity of America and Americans in distinction to their very own private political pursuits.

If you have a look at the latest primaries, pro-Trump candidates are nonetheless competing throughout the nation and successful on the lie that there was election fraud in 2020. How do you construct belief in our democracy, in the concept we will get to a greater place in our nation when you might have individuals at these vital excessive ranges who’re denying the 2020 election outcomes?

You do not and you’ll’t, and that is why I testified Thursday that the previous president and his occasion are immediately a transparent and current danger for American democracy. And I particularly contrasted that with the circumstance, had it been so, that the previous president and the Republican Party had stood down after the 2020 election and accepted the outcomes. But as I stated to the choose committee on Thursday, that is not what’s occurred.

To today, the previous president and the Republican Party have insisted — they usually persist within the declare — that the 2020 election was stolen, and never merely that, however they pledge to execute the identical blueprint in 2024 that they tried in 2020. But their each intention is that if they do execute on that plan in 2024 that they’ll win in 2024 the place they failed in 2020.

The January sixth hearings are clearly vital for the nation to perceive what occurred on that day and why it occurred, and I do know you are feeling that manner, however many Republicans don’t. They name the hearings an effort to divide. And so I wonder if you assume that they are extra possible to carry closure or additional gasoline this division that you just say is destroying our democracy?

Well, once I turned in my assertion to discussing the 2 political events within the United States, crucial phrases to me … have been that the 2 political events in America are the political guardians of our democracy. That’s why I went on to say that it is crucial that each events finish this one struggle for democracy and suggesting that it was the duty of the Republican Party to start that reconciliation.

We can’t have in America both political occasion behaving itself just like the Republican Party has because the 2020 election. As lengthy as that continues then we can have an unstable democratic order within the United States, and we are going to endlessly be combating over American democracy. As I went on to say in my assertion, the struggle for America’s democracy is just not a struggle that America can win.

If the 2 political events are going to be combating actually over America’s democracy, that may be a struggle that’s countless, and it’s harmful of the United States of America. And there’s not an individual on this nation who can disagree with that. They can argue over you recognize whether or not, because the Republicans have continued to do, the 2020 actions of the previous president within the occasion threatened democracy. They’re foolish to even recommend that. But they can’t argue over the summary level, the conceptual level that I made, which is that if the 2 events can’t agree to the orderly switch of energy within the United States then that struggle will proceed, and so long as it continues we wouldn’t have democracy within the United States.

Do you assume that the January sixth hearings which can be occurring proper now would possibly truly kind of break by and encourage politicians to possibly begin to arise on this subject?

Well, you recognize I’m a former judge and a lawyer, and to my data, I’ve by no means spoken publicly a single phrase of politics. So rely me as cynical as to politics and all politicians. Do I feel that possibly these hearings can break by to some American patriots who’re presently our political leaders? I hope with all my coronary heart and soul that the hearings will break by to these political leaders.