A conservative former federal judge said he is “more worried for America today” than he was on Jan. 6, 2021, when Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn the former president’s 2020 election defeat by President Joe Biden.
In an interview with the Guardian published on Monday, J. Michael Luttig predicted a victory for Republican front-runner Trump in the 2024 election “would be catastrophic for America’s democracy.”
Trump has “continued to maintain for three years that the election was stolen from him” with the “complete and total support of the Republican party,” lamented Luttig.
The former president has “corrupted American democracy and corrupted American elections and laid waste to Americans’ faith and confidence in their democracy to the extent that today millions and millions and millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in their elections,” he added.
Luttig in 2021 advised then-Vice President Mike Pence on rejecting Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. The retired judge has since argued that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which bans people who engaged in insurrection from taking public office, should be applied to Trump over his efforts to switch the outcome.
In August, Luttig said Trump’s false election claims had destroyed the GOP.
“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” Luttig said. “And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.”
Last year, he testified to the House Jan. 6 committee that Trump was a “clear and present danger” to American democracy. He is now involved with the new Society for the Rule of Law, which aims to protect the Constitution.
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