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.
Trump’s former attorneys have been indicted for the crime of giving unpopular advice. If the SC decides the merits of the 14A argument against the anti-American claque leading this “legal theory,” those advocates should be stripped of credentials and similarly hauled under indictments for subverting the Constitution.
Now the Dems get to choose the Repub candidate.
You think DeSantis won’t get the same attacks? Pretty short sighted.
The concept is: Trump cannot be president because ..............Just because.................
The REAL REASON is: Trump cannot be president because he is a DANGER TO the Democrats’ freedom......... .........
This latest effort tells me that they know that all these “indictments” are phony and will not withstand legal scrutiny. They desperately want to keep Trump out of office because they rightly fear that they will all end up in prison for their part in the 2020 coup, and all that came before and after.
If the RNC had had the guts to stomp down hard on leftist Lawfare when it was being used against Palin from 2008-2012, it might now have come to this. But, like Trump, Palin was seen as an outsider and the Republican insiders didn’t care what happened to her and in fact aided and abetted the leftist attacks, just as they’ve done with Trump.
The coup d’état was successful in 2020 because they used a corrupt judicial/legal system.
Any resistance to the stolen outcome and the military will be used to protect those who staged it.
Is it even an insurrection when the masses resist a staged coup d’état. Any less is a surrender.
“Since Trump has not been convicted of anything, legally speaking, there is no legal merit to this lawsuit.”
Robert E. Lee was never convicted, but he was clearly barred.
We need tax caps in the US Constitution.
We need to make tax caps to prevent us from being taxed out of our homes and to limit the ability of Democrats to buy votes.
We need to give American voters more reasons to vote Republican.
“we need to remove Biden using the 25th Amendment!”
We don’t need a President Kamala Harris.
Ridiculous. I wouldn’t vote for Trump in the primary - simply because I think he didn’t do a good job on defeating the Deep State, he caved with the shutdown, and I think we need people under 80 in office - but if he wins the primary, he needs to be on the ballot.
Talk about a constitutional crisis, this is the mother load.
“The REAL REASON is: Trump cannot be president because he is a DANGER TO” globalists.
Globalists mistakenly believe that:
1. putting massive numbers of foreigners in our midst will reduce conflict
2. allowing foreigners in will allow US multi-nationals to have a level playing field outside the USA.
Instead of foreign wars where opposite sides can physically break off combat, we will have civil war where physical separation to end conflict is not possible.
The EU and China have clearly indicated they will not play by CFR-based fairness rules.
The Constitution disagrees.
They did the same thing to DeLay and Stevens, convicted them of bogus charges with a heavily Democrat jury in time to get them out disqualified to hold office, then slow walk the appeals until any remedies were moot.
I want a replacement for Trump.
I’m still shopping.
Christie blew it with his support for Trump prosecution.
Ramaswamy has a “climate change” cloud and someone on theconservativetreehouse has alleged he didn’t financially need to take a Soros scholarship.
Nikki Haley, like Ramaswamy, has a possible natural born citizenship issue. She has not shown the love of peace that Trump has.
Ron DeSantis has not shown an ability to attract more votes during his presidential run.
Tim Scott has failed to show that he is fit to move up from just being a good senator for South Carolina.
Republicans had two years under Trump to enact laws.
Trump and Republicans in Congress failed badly.
Conviction is good if you’re an MLB pitcher. Otherwise, not so much.
That does not matter. The 14th uses the term "engaged" in insurrection; no conviction is required.
All that is needed is a Governor or a Secretary if state to agree that Trump "engaged" in what they believe was an insurrection. Trump's lawyers will then need to take to the Courts and ultimately SCOTUS.
But by the time that happens, Trump will be off the ballot in multiple states, Democrats win and mission accomplished.
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