Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a Republican who is testifying at Thursday's January 6 committee hearing, will provide a sharp condemnation of former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, saying Trump and his allies "instigated" a war on democracy "so that he could cling to power," according to a written statement he intends to submit for the committee's record obtained exclusively by CNN.
Luttig outlined in his statement how close he believed democracy came to the brink. "It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the President of the United States at that perilous moment in history," Luttig wrote. "Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis."
Luttig will testify at Thursday's House select committee hearing on the US Capitol attack, which is focused on Trump's pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence to try to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. Luttig was involved in advising the Pence team against claims from Trump allies like attorney John Eastman, who wrote a memo saying Pence had the power to single-handedly block the certification of the election for Joe Biden. Luttig concluded that January 6 "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."
Originally posted by pianojuggler: The people who need to watch it won’t.
And that's been the problem right along, most significant from the advent of Trump.
(Not just watching on-line stuff but reading the very best of our journalists, scholars and academicians - especially during the Election mess. All those beautiful editorials and super intelligentsia coming out against Trump - even formerly loyal Republican. Only reprinted in liberal pubs.)
Hence our increasing national polarization.
No wonder Trump got so much mileage from early on from his "boast" about loving the poorly educated! It behooves us "elites" to expose ourselves to what the others (who seem so inexplicable) are being told especially with the social media's algorithms feeding members partisan news.
-------------------------------- The most dangerous word in the language is "obvious"
Posts: 14392 | Location: PA | Registered: 20 April 2005
FWIW I make myself watch and listen to a decent sampling of Fox news to try to counter the two-sided echo chamber effect and urge others to do the same. How else can we ever hope to understand one another?
I realize it can feel sickening, especially for those of us who are already so demoralized, but I really think it's our obligation if only to set an example.
How about you?
I'm sorry to say I have the impression that here, anyway, those who despise Trump have no real response to (what is seeming to be) the increasing likelihood of his winning next time around, apart from expatriation.
THEN what and who will we have left?
-------------------------------- The most dangerous word in the language is "obvious"
Posts: 14392 | Location: PA | Registered: 20 April 2005
Christie put it well after today's hearing...Trump had really good people around him but when they told him what he didn't want to hear, he turned to the Crackpot Squad (Eastman, Giuliani, Flynn, et al.).
And meanwhile, no one from the GOP has come forward yet in support of Pence taking the principled stand that he did in refusing to overturn the election because he had no legal or constitutional basis to do so.
-------------------------------- When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
Posts: 38221 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
Nearly six in 10 Americans think former President Donald Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll.
The big picture: The findings represent a slight increase since the start of a series of public hearings by the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The mother and daughter from Fulton County who were thrown into a dizzying harassment campaign by President Donald Trump and his allies in the wake of the 2020 election gave emotional testimony on Tuesday to the Jan. 6 Committee about the life-altering effects of that campaign.
"Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States to target you?" Ruby Freeman, the mother of now-former Fulton County elections worker Wandrea' "Shaye" Moss said in taped testimony. "The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. but he targeted me, 'Lady Ruby' - a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run the election in the middle of the pandemic."
Freeman was a volunteer at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020, a fateful event that launched them into the crosshairs of the most powerful man in the world as he sought to overturn Georgia's election results and remain in office.
