J. Michael Luttig Quotes

Over a year and a half later, in continued defiance of our democracy, both the former president and his political party allies still maintain that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from him, despite all evidence — all evidence now — that that is simply false. All the while, this false and reckless insistence that the former president won the 2020 presidential election has laid waste to Americans' confidence in their national elections. More alarming still is that the former president pledges that his reelection will not be "stolen" from him next time around, and his Republican Party allies and supporters obeisantly pledge the same.

By constitutional order, We the People of this great Nation confer upon our elected representatives the power that they are then, by solemn constitutional obligation, directed to wield on our behalf and on America's behalf. But today our politicians live in a different world from the rest of us, and in a different world than that ordained by the Constitution. They live in a fictional world of divided loyalties between party and country, a world of their own unfaithful making.

No American ought to turn away from January 6, 2021, until all of America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and we decide what we want for our democracy from this day, forward. The genius that is America's democracy is this. The Constitution vests all power in "We the People." We agreed in the Constitution to delegate our power to our representatives, only during their time in our service, and at that, exclusively for the purpose of representing our interests in the Nation's Capital, not theirs. Our democracy is the process through which our representatives, using the power that we have delegated to them, in turn and in trust, govern us. We choose in our national elections those who we want to represent us, including most importantly the President of the United States. It is for this simple reason that to steal an election for the presidency from us is to steal our democracy from us.

America is at a perilous crossroads. Who is it that we have become and what is it that America has become? Is this who we want to be and what we want America to be? And if not, just who is it that we Americans want to be? And just what is it that we want our America to be? Many will again turn their eyes away, miscalculating that this is the last time they must see, and thus remember. The partisan mercenaries, who have no interest in either understanding or peace, will be the first who turn away and, in their determined ignorance, ignore. The mercenaries know better than we that what we forcibly put out of our minds or what we forget, we are destined to repeat.

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. The former president's accountability under the law for the riot on the United States Capitol on January 6 is incidental to his responsibility and accountability for his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American People and thereby steal America's democracy from America herself. This said, willful ignorance of law and fact is neither excuse nor defense in law. Willful ignorance, thus, is neither political nor legal excuse or defense available to the former President of the United States, his allies, and his supporters.

Inflamed, the gathered mob marched up the hill from The White House to the United States Capitol to protest, disrupt and prevent the counting of the electoral votes for the presidency, which the president falsely charged were wrongly about to be counted by the Congress in his political opponent's winning favor and in his own losing favor. Once staged at the Capitol, the mob soon erected gallows on the United States Capitol grounds, chanting that Vice President Mike Pence should be hanged. Hanged, the mob chanted, for "cowardly" 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. There were many cowards on the battlefield on January 6. The Vice President was not among them.

In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

Irrespective of the merits of the legal arguments that fueled the former president's efforts to overturn that election — irrespective of them, though there were none — those arguments, and therefore those efforts, by the former president were the product of the most reckless, insidious, and calamitous failures in both legal and political judgment in American history. From their inception, the legal arguments that underlaid the efforts to overturn the 2020 election were, in that context, little more than beguiling and frivolous, perhaps appropriate for academic classroom debate, but singularly inappropriate as counsel to the President of the United States of America in his effort to overturn the presidential election — an election he had lost fair and square and as to which there was not then, and there is not to this day, evidence of fraud. 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.

If one of our national political parties — one of the two political guardians of our democracy — cannot agree even as to whether the violent riot and occupation of the United States Capitol, inspired by the President of the United States and carried out by his followers to prevent Congress from counting the votes for the presidency of those same United States, was reprehensible insurrection or needed, legitimate political discourse, we all can agree on nothing. Nor should we.

As to the first question, we begin where the reconciliation of all broken human relationships, be they broken from war, anger, betrayal, or love, begins — by talking with each other, and listening to one another again, as human beings and fellow citizens who share the same destiny and the same belief in America and hope for her future. For years now, taking the lead from our politicians, we Americans have spoken only coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile at each other, which enables us to speak to each other without guilt or regret. For too many years now, we have spoken to each other as charlatanic political gladiators in an arena that today has become annihilative of America's future, not promising of that future.

A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife's edge. America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other — over our democracy. January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had been raging in America for years, though that day was the most consequential battle of that war even to date. In fact, January 6 was a separate war unto itself, a war for America's democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters. Both wars are raging to this day. A peaceful end to these wars is desperately needed. The war for our democracy could lead to the peaceful end to the war for America's cultural heart and soul. But if a peaceful end to the war for America's democracy is not achievable, there is little chance for a peaceful end to that war. The settlement of this war over our democracy is necessary to the settlement of any war that will ever come to America, whether from her shores or to her shores. Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war.

Today's politicians believe that they never have to choose between partisan party politics and country, when in fact they are obliged by oath to choose between the two every day, and every day they defiantly refuse to choose. For today's politicians, never the twain shall meet between partisan ambition and country, and never the latter before the former, either. The politicians in today's America only sponsor partisan incitement and only traffic in the same, rather than sponsor bi-partisan reason and lead in thoughtful deliberation. They have purposely led us down the road not in the direction toward the bridging of our differences, but in the direction away from the bridging of those differences. They have proven themselves incapable of leading us. But still, all it would take to turn America around is a consensus among some number of these political leaders who possess the combined necessary moral authority and who would agree to be bound together by patriotic covenant, to stand up, step forward, and acknowledge to the American People that America is in peril. In order to end these wars that are draining the lifeblood from our country, a critical mass of our two parties' political leaders is needed, to whom the remainder would be willing to listen, at least without immediate partisan recrimination.

The Nation wept during the evening of January 6, as the Capitol police began to clear and resecure the Capitol at day's end. Finally, at 8:00 p.m. on January 6, seven hours after the siege on the Capitol had begun, Vice President Pence gaveled the Joint Session back into order with measured, understated resolve: "Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. . . . Let's get back to work." January 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States, too. It was not until the next day, January 7, 2021, at 3:42 a.m. in the morning — almost fifteen hours after the Joint Session had first been gaveled into session by Speaker Nancy Pelosi — that the Vice President finally declared that Joe Biden had been elected the 46th President of the United States. On January 6, 2021, the prescribed day for choosing the American president, there was not to be a peaceful transfer of power — for the first time in the history of our Republic.

These wars that we are waging against each other are immoral wars, not moral ones, being immorally waged over morality itself. We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society. Let alone do we agree on how we want to be governed or by whom, or where we go from here and with what shared national ideals, values, beliefs, purposes, goals, and objectives — if any at all. America is adrift. We pray that it is only for this fleeting moment that she has lost her way, until we Americans can once again come to our senses.

False claims that our elections have been stolen from us corrupt our democracy, as they corrupt us. To continue to insist and persist in the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is itself an affront to our democracy and to the Constitution of the United States — an affront without precedent. Those who think that because America is a republic, theft and corruption of our national elections and electoral process are not theft and corruption of our democracy are sorely mistaken. America is both a republic and a representative democracy, and therefore a sustained attack on our national elections is a fortiori an attack on our democracy, any political theory otherwise notwithstanding.