Pence in spotlight during Jan. 6 committee hearing

Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative who served as an informal advisor to then-Vice President Mike Pence, testified before the Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday that Pence would have led a “revolution within a constitutional crisis” if he followed then-President Trump’s order to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel, asked Luttig to elaborate on a statement he made prior to the start of Thursday’s hearing in which the former judge said that if Pence obeyed Trump’s plea, the U.S. “would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis.”

Luttig, after underscoring the importance of the rule of law in the U.S., said Pence would have led the U.S. to its first-ever constitutional crisis if he followed the president’s request and declared Trump the winner of the presidential election.