STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The American Bar Association met last week in Chicago, and some of its members want lawyers to be ready for this fall's election. One of them is Jeh Johnson, a former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama. The other is J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge appointed by a Republican president. They are both part of a bipartisan task force. Judge Luttig warns that some in the Republican Party hope to overturn the election results as they tried after 2020.
J MICHAEL LUTTIG: There are legions of lawyers and others who are preparing to challenge this election if, in their view, they need to.
INSKEEP: Luttig and Johnson say that's why the ABA is creating rapid response teams of lawyers ready to move in when asked for legal help both before and after election day.
JEH JOHNSON: And part of our mission is to support and defend those who are directly participating in our democracy as election workers, as poll workers.
LUTTIG: You know, Steve, our founding fathers feared that Americans would be captured by demagogues and demagoguery and that they would, in the end, opt for a different form of government than the framers and the founders had created for America.
INSKEEP: I want to make sure that I understand what you think the danger is that you're facing. There is a scenario of Americans who believe in democracy but have been lied to, have been told that elections are being stolen, and they respond to that. Do you fear that there is a greater danger, though? - people who don't believe in democracy, who want to end it, who want to get their guy in office and just stay that way forever.
JOHNSON: Yes.
LUTTIG: I think the latter is a subset of the former. There is an intellectual underbelly of the Republican Party that is fomenting a literal revolution against the government that we have today.
INSKEEP: There have been a number of elections, of course, since 2020, including elections for local election officials. Are you confident that everybody who's been elected in the last couple of years will uphold the law, given that in some cases, there are people who question the 2020 election?
LUTTIG: No.
JOHNSON: Not just saying that to...
LUTTIG: We're not confident that at all, and then I'll turn it over to the secretary.
JOHNSON: I'm going to concur with the judge. No, we're not. One of the alarming trends that we're seeing is that there is an increasing politicization of election officials, particularly those who have to run for office as opposed to somebody who's appointed by a governor. We don't have confidence that people elected over the last four years are going to call it straight and are purely apolitical. And this is where lawyers come in, need to be prepared to respond to that scenario.
INSKEEP: Tell me something, judge. After the 2020 election, there were dozens of court cases brought by the former president and his supporters. In every case, they were rejected. Do you have confidence that this time around, if it goes to court - that federal judges will rule in an impartial way?
LUTTIG: Yes, absolutely. Did they do their job with integrity? Yes. But that's all they could do. Donald Trump won the standoff because his followers, many millions of them, believe today that the federal courts improperly rejected his claims.
JOHNSON: Well, you raise a good point, and I think it cannot be repeated enough. There were over 60 lawsuits brought that, in one way or another, challenged the 2020 election. In every one of those lawsuits, there was no finding of any fraud or material irregularity. And these rulings came from judges who were appointed by both Democrats and Republicans.
INSKEEP: One of the thing to ask about, gentlemen - since the 2020 election, there has been one other very big national vote, the 2022 midterm elections. And some of the elections were close, and there were no significant challenges to the results, no big protests. People just had an election and went on. Is there any chance that Americans at large will simply move past this and have an election?
JOHNSON: The big difference is the electoral college. The national election for president is going to be decided in five or six states. And so that makes it different from the midterms. And in that respect, our democracy really does dance on the head of a pin.
LUTTIG: If the politicians decide that they don't want the American people to have a normal election, then America cannot, and neither can the American voters.
INSKEEP: J. Michael Luttig and Jeh Johnson, thanks to you both.
JOHNSON: Thanks for having us.
LUTTIG: Thank you, Steve. It's a real honor to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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