Ex-Judge’s Blistering Leaked Testimony Lays Into Trump’s ‘Treacherous’ Plan to Steal Democracy

Retired U.S. Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig is set to testify before the House Select Committee Thursday and according to a leaked version of his opening remarks, will blame former President Donald Trump for a “treacherous” and “well-developed” plan to steal America’s democracy.”

The leaked statement can be read in full here and was originally reported by CNN’s Jamie Gangel.

Luttig made news in late March of this year when he blamed Senator Ted Cruz for developing the plan to overthrow the 2020 election in a report by the Washington Post.  The former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Luttig, who Cruz once said was “like a father to me,” said the senator played a key role in the attempt to overturn the election.

“Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump’s claim that the election was stolen,” Luttig told the Post. “He was also the most knowledgeable of the intricacies of both the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution, and the ways to exploit the two.”

Luttig is set to go off on the former president, saying “A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge,” and “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.”

He blames Trump’s “well-developed” and “treacherous” plan to “steal America’s democracy” on January 6th.

Luttig’s statement opens:

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.

Like our war from a distant time, these twin wars are “testing whether th[is] nation or any nation . . . so conceived in Liberty . . . can long endure.” We must hope that January 6 was the final battle of at least the deadly war for America’s democracy.

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.

Read his full statement here.