Conservative icon J. Michael Luttig blasts the GOP over Trump’s mistake – News Block

A former federal judge once praised by the right for his conservative legal views scathingly rebuked the Republican Party for its continued loyalty to Donald Trump.

J. Michael Luttig wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “callous support” from the Republican Party has enabled the former president despite his role in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and his impeachment. in the scandal of classified documents.

“Indeed, your fawning support since the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can seize these charges and any others not only for the Republican nomination, but also for the White House in 2024”. he wrote.

He called Trump’s arguments that he has the right to withhold any documents he wants “absurd” and criticized the party for being ready to hand him the nomination again.

“Building the Republican campaign around the recently impeached frontrunner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comical as it is tragic for the country,” he wrote, adding that the campaign is essentially a campaign against the US Constitution.

“If the indictment of Mr. Trump on the Espionage Act charges, not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as president on January 6, fails to get the Republican Party out of his dying political senses. , then he is beyond saving himself. Neither he nor he must be saved.”

He warned that Trump’s campaign is doomed given the large number of Americans who would never vote for him “if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now trying to corrupt the rule of law.” from the country”.

Politico has said that Luttig, who was appointed to the federal court by President George HW Bush in 1991, “operated behind the scenes at the top of the conservative legal world.”

He advised then-Vice President Mike Pence not to cave in to Trump’s pressure to overturn the 2020 election results, advice that Pence eventually heeded.

Read his full column in the Times here.