History Professor Saves The Republic!!

Burke Professor of History Holly Brewer Influenced January 6 Events

In the early days of January 2021, then-President Donald Trump was looking for ways to nullify the results of the recent presidential election, which he had lost. He was pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to ignore Electoral College ballots in the Senate. Pence's office reached out to the legal community for opinions on whether he could take that action. His office consulted, among others, respected former appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig for his opinion. Luttig responded that Vice President had no power whatsoever under the terms of the US Constitution  to alter election results in any way.

Luttig now tells us via Twitter that his opinion was strongly influenced by two articles written by Burke Professor of History, Holly Brewer.  The articles were published in Backbencher, an online journalism experiment addressing "politics, economics, domestic policy, and a smattering of culture,"  launched by Timothy Nash, a writer for The New Republic, two years ago. The articles were "No, Jefferson didn't rig the 1800 vote count," published December 31, 2020 and "More on this Jefferson nonsense," published on January 5, 2021. The first article was also published in Washington Monthly.

Brewer's articles showed that the idea being floated that Thomas Jefferson as Vice President had interfered with the electoral ballots in the election of 1800 to defeat John Adams and elect himself as President. Her articles included images of a number of historical documents showing that this was absolutely not the case.

Judge Luttig on November 5, 2022, thanked Professor Brewer for her articles, for her scholarship, and and for her influence on his opinion on Twitter.