U.S. President Donald Trump at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., April 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
For many years, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, now 71, has been a prominent figure in the conservative legal movement. But he infuriated MAGA Republicans when, in 2022, he testified for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-California) January 6 Select Committee and described Donald Trump as a "clear and present danger to American democracy." Luttig clearly blamed Trump for the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building, arguing that he was unfit to ever serve as president again because he promoted an "insurrection."
During a late April appearance on Jim Acosta's show, Luttig warned that U.S. democracy is facing even more dire circumstances in 2026 than it was in 2021.
"It is exponentially worse today than it was in 2021, Jim. The president has forcibly collapsed the separation of powers in the United States of America," Luttig told former CNN host Acosta. "The Constitution itself is, of course, the greatest charter of government in all of human civilization. But the real genius of the Constitution was the separation of the respective powers in the United States."
Luttig added, "And for 250 years, that genius, that balance — that separation and balance and checks and balances of the other two branches — on the third, has worked magnificently."