Posted on 08/28/2023 7:33:00 AM PDT by Red Badger
Efforts to remove former President Donald Trump from state ballots in the 2024 election are ramping up nationwide after critics argued the leading Republican contender is constitutionally disqualified from serving as president after he “engaged in insurrection” against the United States.
Trump, who is leading the GOP primaries by a landslide, faces four separate indictments along the East Coast, including charges related to hush money, classified documents, election interference, and racketeering. Trump has broadly denied any wrongdoing in the charges brought against him and has claimed politically motivated forces are targeting him in a “witch hunt” propagated by the Biden administration and Democrat prosecutors.
But now opponents across the political spectrum of the former president are arguing that under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, Trump is barred from holding office ever again after the January 6 Capitol attack.
Lawrence Caplan, a Florida tax attorney, became the first to challenge Trump’s candidacy for president in federal court last week, pointing to the Amendment’s “disqualification clause” that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.
He told The Hill that the former president’s grand jury indictments in the Washington, D.C., election interference federal case and the Georgia case stemming from alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election make his disqualification automatic, despite neither indictment accusing Trump of inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.
“The bottom line here is that President Trump both engaged in an insurrection and also gave aid and comfort to other individuals who were engaging in such actions, within the clear meaning of those terms as defined in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Caplan wrote in a filing last week, challenging Trump’s eligibility to run for office again. “Assuming that the public record to date is accurate, and we have no evidence to the contrary, Trump is no longer eligible to seek the office of the President of the United States, or of any other state of the Union.”
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War during the Reconstruction Era and was designed to represent a new birth of freedom for previously disenfranchised citizens, according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. The Amendment’s “disqualification clause” was written to bar those who had joined the Confederacy from serving in state or federal office, but would “theoretically still apply” to those who engage in future rebellions or insurrections against the U.S.
Two legal professors and members of the conservative Federalist Society, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, endorsed the “self-executing” idea in the Pennsylvania Law Review, writing the clause “is alive and in force” and that if any government official “planned, supported, assisted, encouraged, endorsed, or aided in a material way those who engaged in the insurrection of January 6, or otherwise knowingly and willfully participated in a broader rebellion against the constitutional system, such persons are constitutionally disqualified from office.”
“In such situations, Section Three’s constitutional disqualifications can, should, and must be carried out,” Bode and Paulsen wrote.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said during the GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee last week that he would “not going to support somebody who’s been convicted of a serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution.”
Former conservative 4th Circuit Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig and liberal Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe published an article last week in The Atlantic claiming Trump’s effort to allegedly remain in power after the 2020 election “place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause.”
Two civil rights organizations — Mi Familia Vota and Free Speech for People — also launched campaigns in July to pressure state officials in Nevada, California, Oregon, Colorado, and Georgia to disqualify Trump from appearing on ballots in those states in 2024, according to The Hill.
And Bryant “Corky” Messner, a former New Hampshire U.S. Senate candidate in 2020 previously endorsed by Trump, announced plans to materialize the former president’s disqualification at the state level, ABC reported.
But despite the opposition from lawmakers, activists, and never-Trumpers, others warn against using the clause against the former president.
Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the notion puts the Constitution in “grave danger.”
“It would put the decision about who the President is in the hands of local Secretaries of State and Democratic governors, instead of in the hands of the people,” Dershowitz told Just the News.
Constitutional law attorney and former Trump ally Jenna Ellis said in an X-post, “The Left is purposefully calling J6 an ‘insurrection’ to justify a baseless 14th Amendment challenge.”
“It’s like baselessly calling election challenges on behalf of a campaign “racketeering” to justify a RICO charge,” Ellis, who is also named a co-conspirator in Trump’s Georgia indictment, said.
And Fox News host Mark Levin slammed Judge Tribe and Harvard legal scholar Luttig for writing “a self-humiliating piece” in the leftwing Atlantic Monthly claiming the constitutional clause stops Trump from being elected president.
“This has to be one of the truly dumbest essays ever written on the subject,” Levin said in an X-post. “And it is something the Marxist left has been pushing for years against Trump. Trump aside, they are burning down one institution after another self-righteously claiming that they are standing up to tyranny and for the republic. I will address this on the air tonight.”
In April, Trump’s campaign team anticipated a wave of legal challenges thrown at the former president
“What these undemocratic organizations are doing is blatant election interference and tampering,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Washington Post. “They are not even trying to hide it anymore and it is sad they want to deprive the American people of choosing Donald Trump — the overwhelming front-runner by far — as their President.”
“History will not judge them kindly,” Cheung added.
> And when was an insurrection or rebellion declared? It wasn’t. <
Excellent point!
The actual insurrection occurred when the uniparty carried out orchestrated plans to steal an election and stage a coup d’état.
So biden and the uniparty peeps should be the ones on trial and barred from reelection. But that would require the eyes of justice to be blindfolded. That’s not the case however in the present Marxist gvt.
A coup d’état is an illegal and overt attempt by the military or other government elites to unseat the incumbent leader.1 It is a sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel.0
“engaged in insurrection or rebellion”
Incitement alone, even it it happened, would not be sufficient.
The Secret Service stopped Trump from participating in the Capitol Hill protests.
Now, on the other hand, we have Biden’s unrelenting hostility to Amendment II, his unconstitutional Brady Bill votes and student loan shenanigans.
yep...
Stated it ad nauseam.
DANGEROUS TO DEMOCRACY.
AFAIK, he hasn’t even been charged with ‘insurrection’ anywhere that I know of.................
Whem does the revolution begin? And will it be televised
I’m curious. If Trump were to get in who do people suppose would be a trust worthy AG? Everyone talks like their is an obvious choice when I don’t think their is. I remember everyone say John Bolton would be a great SOS. There are no obvious choices for any position. It really can’t be and shouldn’t be anyone who has been involved with politics. It basically has to be someone who has been attacked and nearly destroyed by the system. We can all say Mark Levin but there really is no proof he’s not just playing a character for tv (as an example).
Turley and Dershowitz come out and say that the likelihood of any of these cases going to trial before the election next years, isn’t very likely.
Two things in my opinion:
- the longer the cases take, the more that comes out, the more lousy the cases are appearing to be
- the Left knows this, knows that there won’t be any stopping him. Ergo, throw some more sh*t against the wall in the hole that something sticks.
“...are arguing that under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, Trump is barred from holding office ever again...”
The evil Biden regime breaks every law when it suits them, they ignore other constitutional laws, and are now supposedly lecturing others about the constitution.
I have one thing to say to those heathen, depraved scumbags: GET BENT! /spit
The 14th Amendment did not remove, strike or nullify the Constitutional requirements for holding the Office of the President.
The Left always accuses the Right of doing what the Left is actually doing...................
Jee, I thought it was “guilty until you prove your innocence.”
insurrection
“a violent uprising against an authority or government”
Oxford via Google
rebellion
“open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rebellion
Trump was not armed and he was not violent nor did he order violence against a domestic government or domestic governmental person.
If Trump is removed from ballots, the Democrats will win for sure, because most Republicans will boycott the election.
they know this hasnt a prayer-its just to damage him more w independents and sadly that is working
Well....we need to remove Biden using the 25th Amendment!
It’s just a smear.
It’s just name-calling.
The concept is: Trump cannot be president because the Democrats called him a trouble-maker.
He hasn’t been charged.
He certainly hasn’t been convicted.
The courts might possibly take the position that if the Democrats don’t like him, then he’s not allowed to be president. But that would just clarify the situation that some of us already see.
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