Retired U.S. federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig — a prominent figure in conservative legal circles who advised then-Vice President Mike Pence in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021 — said on Monday he will endorse Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, writing that he and he Republican Party he leads “have determined to prosecute their war against America’s Democracy to its catastrophic end.”
“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,” Luttig said in a five-page statement to CNN. “I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”
“In the 2024 election for President of the United States, there are no more important issues for America,” he added.
The news was first reported by CNN on Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Luttig began his career in the Reagan White House, clerked for future Supreme Cout Justice Antonin Scalia and then-Chief Justice Warren Burger, helped shepherd President George H.W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees David Souter and Clarence Thomas through their confirmation processes and was then appointed to a federal Court of Appeals judgeship in 1991 by Bush. He served until 2006.
By all accounts, Luttig is a lifelong conservative who has dedicated his life to filling the judiciary with conservatives. “Luttig was among the leading feeder judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals with more than 40 of his law clerks going on to clerk with conservative justices on the Supreme Court,” according to the Ronald Reagan presidential library. He was on President George W. Bush’s shortlist to fill Supreme Court seats in 2005.
“America’s two political parties are the political guardians of American Democracy. Regrettably, 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 his statement of endorsement. “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.”
Luttig admitted that he probably shares very few things in common with Harris from a policy perspective, but in his pick for president in November, he’s setting aside those differences, arguing that the alternative, Trump, is “singularly unfit to embody and represent not only to the Nation, but to the world, America’s sacred Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law."
“In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be,” he wrote. “In the 2024 election for President of the United States, there are no more important issues for America.”
The Harris campaign declined to comment on Luttig’s endorsement. Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Pence called Luttig less than 48 hours before he would be tasked with presiding over the certification of the 2020 election results and was advised by the retired judge that he did not have the authority to overrule the Electoral College results as Trump desired. Pence, who briefly ran for the Republican nomination this cycle, has said he won’t endorse Trump nor Harris.
Trump has continued to push the falsehood that he won the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly declined to rule out violence or say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses again. He has also made defending those imprisoned for crimes committed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol a central tenent of his campaign and promised to pardon the hundreds of his supporters convicted of crimes stemming from that day.
“Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again,” Luttig wrote. “Because of the former president’s knowingly false claims, many Americans — especially young Americans, tragically — have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America.”
“In his utterly inexplicable obsession to this very day to deny, attempt to justify, even to glorify January 6, and to bludgeon Americans into believing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him when he knows it was not, the former president has corrupted America’s Democracy,” he added.
Pence went to Luttig for advice less than 48 hours before Jan. 6 and adopted his argument that the vice president did not have the authority to overrule the Electoral College results. On the other side was John Eastman, a former clerk of Luttig’s who the retired judge described as a “brilliant constitutional scholar” until he helped mastermind Trump’s scheme to keep Biden from taking office. Eastman wrote a memo that incorrectly stated Pence had the authority, as president of the Senate, to reject the certification of the election results on Jan. 6, 2021.
Luttig rose to prominence in recent years during his high-profile testimony before the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Speaking before the House panel in a June 2022 prime-time hearing, he testified that “there was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States at all” for Eastman’s plan, calling it “incorrect at every turn.”
Luttig was also part of a group that authored a report published in 2022 that refuted claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Since then, Luttig has emerged as a prominent critic of Trump, including arguing that the Republican ex-president is barred from holding office again under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. He also endorsed President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Kentaji Brown Jackson in 2022.
"The time for America’s choosing has come," Luttig wrote in his letter endorsing Harris. "It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same — or whether they do not."
"It is our Democracy, our Constitution, and our Rule of Law that bind us together as Americans," he later added. "We Americans must never allow ourselves to be put asunder from this that binds us by the siren calls of the politicians and the political sophists, the mercenaries and the opportunists, who entreat us that the only thing that matters in this presidential election is the candidates’ different positions on the sundry policies of the day. All, as if nothing had come before."
“Almost four years ago now, on January 6, 2021, a stake was driven through the heart of America’s Democracy, and on that day American Democracy was left teetering on a knife’s edge,” Luttig wrote in his statement on Monday. “On that day, the prescribed day for choosing the American president, there was not a peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America — for the first time in the almost 250 years since the Founding of the Nation.”
Now, Luttig says Trump and Republicans “have literally taken America political hostage” by threatening a repeat of the Jan. 6 attacks in January 2025 if Trump loses again. For that reason, the career conservative says other policy differences need to be put aside.
“It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same — or whether they do not,” Luttig wrote. “Regrettably, 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.”
Harris' campaign said Luttig's endorsement "underscores the stakes of this election: democracy is on the ballot and it's going to take all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, to save it from a second Donald Trump presidency."
"Trump continues to deny free and fair elections, suggested he would ‘terminate’ the Constitution, and threatened to weaponize the government to get revenge on his enemies – he is careless with our democracy and poses a threat to its survival," said Harris campaign spokesperson Austin Weatherford. "Judge Luttig and conservative leaders across the country are putting country first to ensure Donald Trump never steps foot in the Oval Office again."
Trump’s campaign immediately return a request for comment.
Luttig is not alone among conservatives who have backed Harris, though few still hold positions of power in the party or government. Former GOP Reps. Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, Adam Kinzinger and Susan Molinari are among the prominent former House members who have endorsed Harris, along with former Govs. Jim Edgar, Bill Weld and Christine Todd Whitman, as well as former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. The appeal to democratic values has been central to the Harris campaign’s outreach to disaffected Republican voters.
“Donald Trump’s MAGA extremism is toxic to the millions of Republicans who no longer believe the party of Donald Trump represents their values and will vote against him again in November,” said Austin Weatherford, Harris’ campaign director of Republican outreach, in a statement earlier this month. “Donald Trump said he doesn’t want these voters, but Vice President Harris and our campaign are working overtime to earn the support of my fellow Republicans who care about defending democracy and restoring decency – all of which would be torn away in a second Trump presidency.”