“January 6” was a well-developed plan

The House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol used its third hearing yesterday to make the case that then-President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice president to overturn the 2020 presidential election “directly contributed” to the violence on January 6, 2021, according to committee aides.The hearing, aides said, also revealed new materials about then-Vice President Mike Pence’s movements on January 6, including his whereabouts and what he was doing when rioters breached the Capitol.

This comes as Republican candidates across the country are running and winning primaries on Trump’s false assertion that he won the election, despite the fact such claims have been dismissed by former members of his administration testifying under oath.

Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a Republican who is testifying at Thursday’s January 6 committee hearing, provided a sharp condemnation of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, saying Trump and his allies “instigated” a war on democracy “so that he could cling to power,” according to a written statement he intends to submit for the committee’s record obtained exclusively by CNN.

Luttig outlined in his statement how close he believed democracy came to the brink and also testified at Thursday’s House select committee hearing on the US Capitol attack, which is focused on Trump’s pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence to try to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.

The retired federal judge was involved in advising the Pence team against claims from Trump allies like attorney John Eastman, who wrote a memo saying Pence had the power to single-handedly block the certification of the election for Joe Biden.

Luttig concluded that January 6 “was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost.”