Prominent conservative legal scholar endorses Kamala Harris for president

Retired federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, signaling the first time the judge will vote for a Democrat. 

Appointed by former President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, Luttig served as a conservative jurist for about 15 years before leaving the bench in 2006 to serve as general counsel for Boeing. The veteran of two Republican administrations chastised former President Donald Trump in a statement to CNN as he announced unwavering support for Harris. 

“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 told the outlet. “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 claimed Trump lost his support after the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol. He made his endorsement on the eve of the first night of the Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic Party is set to rally around Harris.

“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,” the former judge wrote. “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.”

After results showed Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, the GOP leader claimed, without evidence, that the election was stolen from him. Alleging voter fraud and citing concerns over mail-in ballot policies in swing states, Trump made a speech to supporters in Washington, D.C., and urged his vice president, Mike Pence, not to certify the results of the election. 

At the time, Luttig pleaded with Pence and appeared to be instrumental in convincing him to certify the results through a series of posts on X.

“As the former US Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig observed, ‘[t]he only responsibility and power of the Vice President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the Electoral College votes as they have been cast,’” Pence wrote as he explained why he would certify the election. 

Although Trump has argued that he played no role in inciting the protest at the Capitol, pointing to social media posts he made calling for “no violence” and urging supporters to “remain peaceful,” he failed to convince Luttig. 

On Monday, Luttig continued to claim Jan. 6 was “the war on America’s Democracy that was instigated by the former president and his allies.” 

Luttig has also become an outspoken critic of Trump over the various legal battles the former president faces in court.

“Donald Trump has bludgeoned America into submission to his will over the will of the Constitution and the American people. It’s just that plain and that simple,” Luttig told MSNBC’s Deadline White House earlier this year. “The only way to break that is through the rule of law … until or unless the courts of the United States apply the rule of law to Donald Trump, I don’t see a way out of the predicament that the country finds itself in today.”