A former US Court of Appeals judge who was involved in the hearings said he was confident that the Supreme Court would uphold the criminal conviction of Donald Trump and that any judge who sentenced him to federal prison would have no choice but to do so.
The retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge said that a district judge would have no choice but to sentence the former president to prison.
He testified as a star witness in the committee's hearings and said that he saw "poetic justice" in the investigation. He was referring to the work of Vice Chair Liz Cheney, who, despite losing a primary to a Trump-backed opponent, pressed the panel to make its criminal referral to the Justice Department.
The January 6th committee and the political careers of its members were destroyed by the president. The political career of the former president is over. Liz Cheney was the one who ended Donald Trump's political career.
He was a lawyer in Ronald Reagan's White House and a top Justice Department official under George H.W. Bush who helped steer Clarence Thomas's confirmation to the Supreme Court. In the mid 1990s, he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals and he hired John and Ted to work for him. Cruz said in 2016 that he was like a father to him.
When he hired them, they were brilliant young lawyers who were among the best and brightest to come out of law school, and he was very proud of them as law clerks. They took a wrong turn, along with many others in the conservative legal movement, when they adopted the "independent state legislative theory", which held state legislatures could ignore the results of an election.
Since he spoke out against the theory, he broke with both of his former clerks. He said that John would have died a thousand deaths if he had read what he had written. He didn't speak to Cruz since January 6, 2021.
He explained his own evolution in more detail than before. He was alarmed by Trump's conduct since he announced his campaign for the presidency in 2015, and he was troubled by the entire Trump administration. After his wife pressed him to do something to make sure Trump left office, he went public.
I told her that I agree with her that he won't leave the White House, but I don't have anything to do with it. I haven't been in Washington in two decades. No one pays attention to what I say. There is no way that I could affect this.
He said that she pled with him as we went to sleep. Mike was told by his wife to stop. There is nothing I can do. I want to apologize.
Early the next morning, he got a call from Richard Cullen, an old friend and prominent conservative lawyer who was serving as Vice President Mike Pence's outside counsel during the time when Trump was pushing him to reject electoral votes.
The most important decision of my life was made at that point. He went public after consulting with his son. He wrote that the only responsibility and power of the vice president was to faithfully count the electoral college votes. As a result of his constitutional position, Pence refused to do Trump's bidding. In June of last year, Luttig testified in the select committee hearings, excoriating the views of his former clerk, saying his "blueprint to overturn the 2020 election" was the most calamitous failure in both legal and political judgement in American history.
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