On the night of 4 January, Luttig received a call from old friend Richard Cullen, who was working as a lawyer for Pence. Cullen explained that John Eastman, who had previously clerked for Luttig, was making the claim that Pence had the constitutional authority to stop certification of the election results.
Luttig told Cullen to advise Pence that this was flat wrong and further set out his views on Twitter: “The only responsibility and power of the Vice-President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast.”
On January 6 a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and demanded that Pence be hanged, leaving a trail of death, destruction and excrement, but the results got certified all the same.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Born in Tyler, Texas, he was assistant counsel to the president under the Republican Ronald Reagan, and clerked for then judge Antonin Scalia and the supreme court justice Warren Burger.
Cullen explained that John Eastman, who had previously clerked for Luttig, was making the claim that Pence had the constitutional authority to stop certification of the election results.
Luttig told Cullen to advise Pence that this was flat wrong and further set out his views on Twitter: “The only responsibility and power of the Vice-President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast.”
He is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination and, according to a recent New York Times and Siena College poll, leading Biden in five of the six most important battleground states.
Even some Trump critics, however, have argued that a legal ruling banning him from the race from the White House would enflame America’s divisions, whereas beating him at the ballot box would be more satisfying.
On other side of that split is the Federalist Society, a group that for decades has played a crucial role in grooming conservative judges – its prominent figures have included Leonard Leo, who advised Trump on his supreme court picks – but has said little about the threat posed by the former president to the constitutional order.
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