J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appellate judge widely considered to be the founder of the conservative legal movement that gave rise to the current far-right Supreme Court, is voting for Vice President Kamala Harris — the first time in 70 years he hasn’t backed a Republican presidential candidate.
Luttig, who has grown increasingly outspoken against former President Trump in recent years over his incitement of insurrection on January 6 and who argued he wasn’t even eligible to run for president again under the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, already made this endorsement in August — but broke down his decision further in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday.
He blasted Trump over his newest comments that he will use the military on liberals and “the enemy within.”
“There could be no higher duty of American citizenship than to decisively repudiate a man who betrayed the nation when he was previously entrusted with the highest office in the land and now threatens the persecution of American citizens who have crossed him,” wrote Luttig. “In the almost 250 years since the founding of the nation, no president before Donald Trump has ever so betrayed America.”
Luttig, who was instrumental in getting conservative right-wing Justice Clarence Thomas confirmed in the Supreme Court while working as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that Trump, “Drove a stake through the heart of America’s democracy and Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, inciting insurrectionists with his speech on the Ellipse and other actions in an attempt to overturn the presidential election he knew he lost to Joe Biden and prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in almost 250 years.”
This, he continued, ultimately led to Trump achieving “the ignominious distinction of being the first American president since the founding to be charged with crimes against the United States.”
The choice in the election is clear, Luttig concluded — and the consequences of the election going the wrong way are dire.
“Ms. Harris is the only candidate who can be trusted to honor the president’s sacred obligations to America’s democracy, Constitution and rule of law,” wrote the conservative jurist, saying that only she has urged Americans to “stand up for the rule of law. For our democratic ideal. And for the Constitution of the United States.”
These, he concluded, are words “America has never heard … from Donald Trump. And it never will.”
