Thread by @PaulaChertok

🔥🔥Reading Luttig's statement & I'm so grateful he doesn't tiptoe around the crisis. The conservative judge says #Jan6 was a battle in Trump & GOP's ongoing war on democracy & America. He uses "war" 21x on just p1 ! He says they lied knowingly, to cling to power. #Jan6thHearings

Luttig: A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, & our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.

America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other…

Luttig: "January 6 was…a war for America’s democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters…
only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war."
#Jan6thHearings

Luttig: "These senseless wars…were conceived and instigated from our Nation’s Capital by our own political leaders collectively and they have been cynically prosecuted by them to fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America herself at stake."
#Jan6Hearings

Luttig calls Trump/GOP war on democracy "immoral," "unholy," having us fighting eo,

"We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is & is not tolerable discourse in civilized
society."

Luttig: The war on democracy instigated by the fmr pres & his political party allies on Jan 6 was the natural & foreseeable culmination of the war for America…the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by [Trump] to overturn the…election…to cling to power

🔥Luttig: "KNOWING full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters FALSELY claimed … that he had won…, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they KNEW [Trump] had lost."[emphasis added]

"The treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal America’s democracy. Called to Washington DC that day by the president…Inflamed [by lies at rally]…the gathered mob marched…to US Capitol to protest, disrupt & prevent counting of the electoral votes for the presidency"

Luttig: Once staged at the Capitol, the mob erected gallows on US Capitol grounds, chanting VP Pence should be hanged…Soon thereafter, the rioters stormed the Capitol itself, breaching, occupying & ransacking the temple of our democracy…as Congress began constitutional counting

Luttig lays out the facts of #January6 in all their horrifying clarity. Trump & his GOP coup plotters knew full well the mob of inflamed Trump fans would be intimidating & OF COURSE violent. In the heat of their rage, you bet they would have executed Pence & assassinated Dems.

Luttig: Not until over 3 hours after the riot had begun…after the siege had achieved…its truncated objective…did [Trump] finally yield to the pleas & prayers from his own family, friends & political allies,…& grudgingly ask his supporters in a…forced video tweet to disperse

Luttig: "The Nation wept during the evening of January 6.…January 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States… there was not… a peaceful transfer of power—for the first time in the history of
our Republic"

#January6thHearings #TrumpCoup #DemocracyNotAutocracy

#January6thHearings are starting. I'll have to finish up this thread on Judge Luttig's statement afterwards.