American voters are unfazed by President-elect Trump’s various misdeeds, said retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, a longtime conservative jurist who has vocally opposed the former president.
“The American voters do not care about who, as an individual, is in the White House,” Luttig said Wednesday evening during a panel hosted by the Society for the Rule of Law.
“They don’t care, in this instance, what this man has done for the past eight years,” he said. “They could care less that he’s the first American president ever to be indicted for grave crimes against the United States of America…They do not care about his views on women. They do not care about any of this.”
It’s one of many lessons to be learned from the presidential election, he said, explaining that Republicans successfully convinced the American electorate that “nothing mattered” from Trump’s previous term and he ran on a “clean slate.”
“And the American people bought it,” he said. “Hook, line and sinker.”
Trump has faced a series of legal troubles since leaving the White House, including four criminal indictments and several civil matters.
The former president was convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult film actress with whom he allegedly had an affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election, a plot prosecutors portrayed as an effort to sway the contest’s outcome.
He was also charged in two federal cases with attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents and in Georgia with attempting to overturn that state’s presidential election results.
Following his election victory, those cases appear to be crumbling.
Last week, a federal judge granted a request from special counsel Jack Smith to suspend all deadlines in Trump’s federal election subversion case. Smith on Wednesday also asked a federal appeals court to pause proceedings in his challenge to the classified documents case’s dismissal.
In Georgia, the case against Trump and several allies is paused indefinitely while an appeals court weighs a challenge from the defense unrelated to the election.
And in Trump’s New York case — the only one to reach trial — a state judge is now weighing whether to throw his conviction out and stop his sentencing.
“For the first time in American history, an American president has corrupted democracy itself and the rule of law in America,” Luttig said Wednesday. “And he got away with it, on Nov. 5, 2024.”
Put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, Luttig has emerged as one of the most prominent conservative voices against Trump in recent years, issuing pointed criticisms against Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election and testifying before the House Jan. 6 committee.
He endorsed Vice President Harris in the presidential race in August, contending she was the only major candidate who could “claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”
Trump won both the electoral college and popular votes in November’s contests, according to Decision Desk HQ. Luttig called the outcome “terrible for the country.”
“But sometimes people have to learn the hard way,” the retired judge said. “And that’s what’s happening.”
