John Michael Luttig testifies before the Select Committee on June 16, 2022. (Photo by House Creative Services)
Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote a Substack column Thursday warning that the next big Jan. 6 will be Jan. 3 and that Americans should prepare for it to get ugly.
On Jan. 6, a president refused to accept his loss and relinquish his power in a peaceful transfer of the office, recalled Luttig.
"Today, almost six years later, the 47th President – the very same man – and his Republican congressional allies are determined to prosecute the president’s war against American democracy to its catastrophic end," he wrote. "That catastrophic end for which they senselessly yearn could well come on January 3, 2027, when Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in this president’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party."
The next date for the transfer of power comes when the House and Senate will be sworn in. Luttig fears it will be the final dying breath of the GOP as they are forced to hand over power to those who defeated them.
"Since his return to the White House, the president’s every unconstitutional act in his effort to seize control over the midterm elections five weeks away – each hailed by his prostrate Republican Congress — has been toward the end of ensuring that Republicans retain a majority in the 120th Congress," explained Luttig.
He cited a conversation between Trump and Dan Bogino on February 2 in which Trump said, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting ... The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.’”
During his midterm convention in Dallas Trump pledged he'd give every American adult a $5,000 "dividend" if Republicans maintain power in the House and Senate. He also demanded that everyone attending the event swear an oath to him and the GOP to vote on Nov. 3.
"So unalterably subjugated to Trump is today’s Republican House that even a decisive victory for Democrats and a resounding repudiation of Trump and the MAGA Republicans at the polls in November will not guarantee that a Democratic majority-elect will be seated in the 120th Congress on January 3," Luttig cautioned.
The retired judge said that Trump has spent the past year pressuring Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other House Republicans to treat a possible Democratic midterm win as fraudulent, even if all of the votes haven't been completely counted or even cast.
In Luttig’s view, that pressure is working: if Democrats win control of the House, Republicans may claim the election was stolen and, on Jan. 3, try to block some of the Democratic winners from being seated in the new Congress.
It appears that Johnson is on board: “We cannot and will not allow [the Democrats] to take the majority in the House of Representatives," he told members the following day.
"Over the past year and a half since his return to the White House, the 47th President has exploited every conceivable unlawful means possible to rig the upcoming midterm elections in favor of the Republicans, and the federal courts have struck down as unconstitutional every one of these unlawful attempts," said Luttig.
He warned that Trump is likely to "try every unlawful means over the next five weeks to ensure that Republicans handily win the midterm elections in November. Those of us who oppose his illegality will look to the courts, but the federal courts will be institutionally incapable of checking his final unlawful rampage."
He said that the only hope for America to dodge a constitutional crisis on Jan. 3 is for Republicans to be forced to answer whether they'll betray their oath of office for Trump one last time.
"America’s time of testing has finally come," said Luttig.