Judge J. Michael Luttig has always been considered a conservative Republican. He worked in the Reagan administration and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice Warren Burger. In 1991, he was appointed to the Fourth District Court of Appeals by President George H.W. Bush. Luttig resigned his judgeship in 2006 to work as general counsel for Boeing.

Although a stalwart conservative, Luttig was appalled by Trump’s attempt to overturn the election he lost in 2020. He testified to the House January 6 committee that Trump and his allies were “a clear and present danger to American democracy.” In 2023, he co-wrote an article with liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe arguing that Trump should be barred from running for the Presidency because of his role in the 2021 insurrection (Section 3 of the 14th Amendment).

When Trump was leading the field in 2024, Luttig predicted that Trump’s election would be “catastrophic” for the United States, and he subsequently endorsed Kamala Harris.

Luttig has continued to put the Constitution and the rule of law over partisan politics.

Judge Luttig wrote this article on his Substack blog. I reposted about half of it. To read it in full, open the link or subscribe.

Judge Luttig wrote:

On January 11, 2026, with America and the world anxiously watching — and hoping — Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell fearlessly stood up to the President of the United States, and his truth put the lie to Donald Trump.

For their honorable and courageous stands against the President of the United States, Chairman Powell and Judge Boasberg may have earned Donald Trump’s eternal enmity, but they have earned the nation’s and the world’s eternal gratitude.

On that day, Chairman Powell became the first elected or appointed public official to stand in the breach in America’s time of testing and confront the President of the United States, man to man. The first public figure in over five years who Donald Trump has been unable to insult, harass, threaten, or persecute into silence, bludgeon into submission, or politically destroy, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board became the first man to stand up to the wannabe king of the United States.

History will record that Chairman Powell’s courageous televised statement in defiance of the President of the United States marked the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, and history will richly reward Jerome Powell with its favor.

It could just well be that this honorable humble public servant single-handedly saved America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law, if only the others of America’s institutions of government, democracy, and law will finally summon the same courage and follow Jay Powell’s noble and courageous lead before it’s too late.

Jay Powell was always the one man in the world who could stand up to Donald Trump, and Trump knew it, which is why, despite his false bravado, he feared the Reserve Board Chairman. Trump forced the latest confrontation with Jay Powell in one last desperate attempt to force Powell from office so that he could finally seize control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank in the eleventh hour and manipulate the interest rates to disguise the crippling economic impact of his sweeping, unconstitutional global tariffs and his unconstitutional war in Iran.
It turned out to be the worst miscalculation of his life.

Donald Trump considered his years-long effort to fire Powell or force his resignation and to gain control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank to be the decisive showdown of his presidency. His face-off with the Federal Reserve was always to be Donald Trump’s Armageddon in which he victoriously vanquished his archnemesis Jay Powell and took the victor’s spoil of control over the Federal Reserve Bank.

When, not if, he succeeded, his conquest was to be the crowning achievement of his presidency — the conquest that assured the success of his entire presidency, because he would control the monetary policy of the United States and, along with it, interest rates, and thereby the economies of the world, to do with them whatever he pleased.

But Donald Trump’s gloriously imagined victory over Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve Bank was never to be and, like the Greek tragedy that it was, everyone in the world knew it, except Donald Trump.

When the day of the world heavy-weight championship finally arrived, the favored heavy-weight Reserve Board Chairman knocked out the reigning light-weight President of the United States in the opening round. The President was TKO’d in the championship fight of his life by the man he had insulted, tormented, and belittled for years.

Donald Trump had finally crossed the wrong man. It was the demure, universally respected Jay Powell who finally called Trump’s bluff, revealing that the humiliated emperor embarrassingly has no clothes.

Both America and the world had longed for a David to slay America’s Goliath and save the nation and the world from the giant’s tyrannical rampage. On January 11, As he spoke clearly, plainly, and truthfully about his ludicrously corrupt pretextual prosecution by the bully president, the entire world cheered on their new David-hero.

America and the world at last had their longed-for hero in the pitched battle for the heart and soul of America, The Honorable Jerome Powell, the courageous Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

History is written by the victor, Winston Churchill is (mis)reported to have said. On January 11, 2026, Jay Powell wrote the victor’s history of the 47th President of the United States before the would-be victor even got the chance.

It poetically fell to The Honorable James Boasberg to mop up after Donald Trump’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Fed Chairman. Judge Boasberg’s swift and withering judicial confirmation of the president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and Rule of Law officially ratified the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency that Jay Powell had wrought. For his distinguished service to the country and to the Constitution, The Honorable James Boasberg is America’s other Profile in Courage and Hero in the battle for America and its future.