It's been a measure of former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig's stature in the conservative legal movement that Supreme Court justices hired so many of his law clerks — 40 over 15 years. Then two of those proteges became (in)famous: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Trump lawyer John C. Eastman, lead actors in the plot to overturn Joe Biden's election.
Now Luttig is doing penance of a sort: He's joined the Resistance — against former President Donald Trump, certainly, but also against his erstwhile mentees.
Early on, Luttig did so only by invitation: Two days before Jan. 6, 2021, then-Vice President Mike Pence sought Luttig's counsel to counter Trump's demands that Pence, in presiding over Congress' count of Biden's electoral votes, reject the votes of six states. Pence, in his letter to Congress ahead of the proceedings, name-checked Luttig to argue that a vice president has no such power.
