A former conservative federal judge has slammed Mike Pence for defying a subpoena by a grand jury to testify in the Justice Department’s investigation into Donald Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, uprising.
In a New York Times essay published on Friday, J. Michael Luttig warned that the former vice president – who had advised in January 2021 about rejecting Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election – was playing a dangerous game by threatening to challenge the entire subpoena. the road to the Supreme Court.
The choice could seriously damage Pence politically, suggested the judge appointed by George HW Bush.
“The former vice president did not want the embarrassing spectacle of the Supreme Court forcing people to appear before a grand jury in Washington just when he was starting his campaign for president,” he wrote.
Pence, who has said he will decide the 2024 presidential election in the spring, is “considered by many people across the political spectrum to be a brave profile” for choosing democracy over his former boss, Luttig said.
But Pence’s branding of “a perfectly legal subpoena as unconstitutional is far from the constitutionally hallowed ground on which he stood on January 6,” Luttig added.
Federal courts will “make short work of this ‘Hail Mary’ claim,” he warned, adding that Pence “has no chance in the world of winning this case.”
Luttig advised Pence not to “let this dangerous tactic last.”
“If they do, it will be more than expected,” he concluded.
Read the full essay here.