Luttig described in his assertion how shut he believed democracy got here to the brink.

Luttig will testify at Thursday’s Home choose committee listening to on the assault on the US Capitol, which focuses on Trump’s strain marketing campaign in opposition to then-Vice President Mike Pence to attempt to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. Luttig was concerned in advising Pence’s workforce in opposition to claims by Trump allies similar to legal professional John Eastman, who wrote a memo saying Pence had the ability to single-handedly block Joe Biden’s election certification. .

The retired decide praised Pence for his actions on January 6 and his willingness to face as much as Trump and his allies. “There have been many cowards on the battlefield on January 6,” Luttig wrote. “The vice chairman was not amongst them.”

Luttig wrote in his assertion to the committee: “From its inception, the authorized arguments underpinning the efforts to nullify the 2020 election had been, in that contextlittle greater than seductive and frivolous, applicable maybe for tutorial debate within the classroom, however singularly inapplicable as counsel for the president of the USA of America in his effort to annul the presidential election, an election he had pretty misplaced and through which there was then, and there may be to at the present time, no proof of fraud. .”

Luttig’s function in preventing Trump’s efforts to subvert the election was all of the extra notable given his stature as a decide in Republican circles. Eastman, who drafted the point-by-point memo stating that Pence might cease certification on January 6, was an worker of Luttig.

One other former secretary: Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who voted in opposition to certifying the election on Jan. 6 and arranged a bunch of Republican senators in search of to delay certification till that day.

In his assertion, Luttig additionally warned that efforts to nullify the 2020 election amounted to an assault on American democracy, a menace he stated continues at this time due to Trump’s continued claims that the election was stolen from him.

“This false and reckless insistence that the previous president gained the 2020 presidential election has shattered Individuals’ confidence of their nationwide elections,” Luttig wrote. “Extra alarming nonetheless is that the previous president guarantees that his reThe election is not going to be ‘stolen’ from you subsequent time, and your GOP allies and supporters respectfully pledge to do the identical.”

Luttig additionally supplied a protection of the committee’s method on January 6, warning that “America’s democracy was virtually stolen from us” and urging the American public to heed.

“No American ought to stroll away from January 6, 2021,” he stated, “till your entire United States faces what occurred to our nation on that day, and we determine what we wish for our democracy from at the present time ahead.”