While Memorial Day is still fresh in our minds, we would all do well to remind ourselves of the immortal words spoken to the West Point cadets at the… - J. Michael Luttig

With my respect to the Select Committee, I did not submit this statement prior to my testimony today pursuant to the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, so to avoid any appearance or suggestion that my testimony is that of an interested political party partisan or is on behalf of the Select Committee or any person involved with, on, or after January 6, or is that of a witness in any other way “interested” in these hearings. I testify today only as a private citizen, and as a non-partisan, disinterested, independent former Federal Judge on the United States Court of Appeals who happens to have been a fact witness to the events surrounding January 6. The views, the thoughts, and the words herein are mine and mine alone, submitted to the Select Committee on my own behalf and no one else’s.

The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America. It 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 treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal America's democracy. Called to Washington D.C. that day by the president, the president himself, and the president's followers, supporters, and allies gathered near The White House for a "Stop the Steal" rally. The president maintained at that rally that the 2020 presidential election had been "fraudulently stolen" from him.

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.