Michael Luttig: January 6 and the Ongoing Threat to American Democracy

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

In a recent article, Judge J. Michael Luttig warns that the last presidential election was a dry run for the next. As he explains, since 2020, our political leaders have yet to do what is necessary to protect against future efforts to overturn elections. In this Conversation, Luttig, a former United States Circuit judge, discusses the role that he played in January 2021, when he advised Vice President Pence on the Constitutional arguments for resisting President Trump’s pressure to overturn the election results. As Luttig wrote and posted on Twitter on January 5, and Vice President Pence cited in his letter on January 6, The only responsibility and power of the Vice President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast... and The Constitution does not empower the Vice President to alter in any way the votes have been cast, either by rejecting certain votes or otherwise. But Luttig stresses that serious dangers and threats remain. Given potential loopholes that might be exploited in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, it is possible or even likely that future candidates will engage in efforts to subvert elections. Luttig calls for a national effort to protect the integrity of our electoral system, and explains the urgent need to reform the Electoral Count Act to make efforts to overturn elections less likely to succeed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by an old friend, Mike Ludig,
0:23.0	with whom I worked a bit in the first George H. W. Bush administration, when he had very senior position,
0:29.6	very important position as the Justice Department, as head of the Office of Legal Council, became
0:34.5	appointed as a federal judge in 1991 to the fourth circuit, was one of the most distinguished
0:41.4	circuit judges for 15 years after that. Famously, I think you set more Supreme Court clerks to the
0:47.9	Supreme Court than any other fellow judge, perhaps, and very highly respected and conservative,
0:53.6	not just a conservative legal circle, but in all legal circles. I was reviewing your biography
0:59.0	the last night, and like your mentor and hero, I guess, Justice Scalia, you dissented from
1:05.1	conservative orthodoxy on a couple of occasions, and say that one terrorist in case I remember
1:10.9	where you dissented, saying that as an American citizen, somewhat, I think we captured
1:16.2	Afghanistan had certain legal rights, and you were the minority on the circuit, I think,
1:20.9	with the Supreme Court appellate your view in 2004. Judge Ludig left the court in 2006,
1:27.8	was a corporate counsel for over a decade, very interesting career, executive branch, judicial
1:33.2	branch, private sector, we have to have a separate discussion about what you learned about
1:37.3	America from all these different aspects of your career. But today, I want to talk about 2020,
1:43.5	and the courage crisis, the crisis of 2020, and the crisis of today, in terms of
1:48.7	democracy and our presidential elections. So, Mike Ludig, thank you very much for joining me.
1:53.4	Thank you, Bill. I don't think I've ever uttered these words to anyone, but it's a pleasure to be
1:58.6	on your show this morning. These judges are kind of averse to mere discussions with the
2:06.3	quite ploy, but that's okay. You know, it's nice of you to bend once for us. So, you were there,
2:11.9	someone who knows the government so well and follows the thoughts so much about the will of law
2:17.8	on the constitution and served elections every four years. I mean, you were, what were you thinking,
	...

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