A former federal appeals judge has been working behind the scenes for months to help the country avoid another Jan. 6 attack, and he expects that effort to pass Congress next week.
“You had [former President Donald] Trump leading the riot on the Capitol to do what the existing Electoral Count Act allowed, letting Congress decide the president,” said Judge Michael Luttig, who retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2006. There are rumors on the hill that the ECA could be added to the Senate’s version of a short-term funding bill.
Luttig was thrust into the political spotlight this summer when he spoke before the Jan. 6 Committee investigating the capitol attack.
“It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the president of the United States at that perilous moment in history,” Luttig told members of Congress. Documents have since shown that scheme involved using loopholes and poorly defined language in the existing Electoral Count Act to stop congress from counting electoral votes in favor of President Joe Biden.
Passed in 1887, the ECA explains how to resolve disputes over the presidential election and it was rarely mentioned before former President Donald Trump’s loss.
But after the attack Luttig, along with a number of other conservative judges and lawyers, made their own report on what happened to Trump in 2020. That report helped inspire Luttig’s work with Congress to make changes to the ECA.
“Under the current Electoral Count Act, Congress has the power to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances,” Luttig said, promising the proposed legislation would remove those circumstances. “After the [amended] ECA passes, it will not.”