It’s probably fair to say that J. Michael Luttig is not a household name, but in conservative legal circles, the retired federal judge has few rivals. As Politico noted a couple of years ago, the jurist has spent much of his adult life operating “at the top of the conservative legal world.”
As regular readers might recall, Luttig served as an attorney in the Reagan White House, a clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and one of the nation’s most prominent conservative judges — overseeing clerks with familiar Republican names such as Ted Cruz and John Eastman.
Not surprisingly, during some recent Republican administrations, Luttig was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, when then-Vice President Mike Pence and his team weighed their legal options after the 2020 election, the retired judge was the voice they sought out. (Luttig told them to follow the law. They did.)
In the years that followed, Luttig took fresh steps to distance himself from his ostensible allies on the right, becoming one of the star witnesses in the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings. A year ago, the retired jurist said American democracy is in “grave peril” because of the radicalization of GOP politics.
“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” Luttig said last August. “So today, in my view, there is no Republican Party to counter the Democratic Party in the country.”
It’s against this backdrop that the retired judge is also endorsing the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. CNN reported: Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy. It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat.
“In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law,” Luttig wrote in a statement obtained by CNN. “As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.” This comes on the heels of Harris also picking up support from two former Republican congresswomen: Virginia’s Barbara Comstock and New York’s Susan Molinari. (When the latter was asked why she’s supporting the vice president, Molinari said Harris is “smart,” “strong,” “knows how to handle herself on the world stage,” and is “not crazy.”) Two weeks ago, Republicans for Harris launched to some fanfare. The effort appears to be growing, which should probably make Trump and his team nervous.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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