“The Supreme Court does not want to decide this case and they will likely look for every legitimate way possible to avoid deciding whether the former president is disqualified from the presidency. But there are very, very few, if any, off ramps that would allow the Supreme Court to avoid decision in this case. Indeed, I believe there are none. Here's one.
If I were on the Supreme Court, here is how I would play this out:
- Ruling "ripeness," I would say that the lower courts cannot rule on keeping Trump off of the ballot because this isn't a general election and former President Trump hasn't won the primary yet. A lot of future events still must happen before Trump is close to being President, so the ban is overturned.
- After the primaries are concluded, I would point out that primaries are party-specific nomination processes, and that even the winner of the primary is not the official candidate until the party's convention selects the candidate it wants to run in the general election. The issues is still not ripe.
- After the convention confirms former President Trump as its nominee, I would rule that Trump is not actually on the ballot, Electors are. Trump's name is a convenient tag to make it easier for the voters, but according to the Constitution it's the Electors who are being voted on, so removing Trump from the ballot is really removing the Electors from the ballot, which is unconstitutional.
- If former President Trump actually wins the general election, THEN AND ONLY THEN should the Supreme Court review President-elect Trump's qualification to be President via the 20th amendment Section 3: " if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified;"
- At this point, the Supreme Court should hear 14th amendment Section 3 arguments regarding disqualification over insurrection. This finding will then meet or fail to meet the 20th amendment's "fail to qualify" clause and the President-Elect may or may not be disqualified at this time.
- The beauty of this is the same as when Democrats tamper with the election: the party that wins still wins. If Trump is disqualified after winning the election, the Republican VP takes over as President, instead of the Democrats' plan to remove Trump so that Biden can win the election.
Notice how when Democrats abuse the campaign finance laws by accepting questionable funding that pays for their negative ads and get-out-the-vote operations, and after they win the election and the source of tainted funds is revealed the Democrats apologize and "return the funds" but keep the seat?
That's what we have to engineer now. We need to get the Supreme Court to defer their ruling to the 20th amendment (not the 14th amendment), and then however way the ruling goes the Republicans keep the Presidency.
-PJ
From an article by Hans von Spakovski:
“All of the challengers filing lawsuits to try to remove Trump from their state ballots are ignoring the final sentence in Section 3, which is a unique provision found in no other amendment to the Constitution. It allows Congress to remove the disqualification clause “by a vote of two-thirds of each House.” Congress voted to remove the disqualification twice. The Amnesty Act of 1872 stated that the “political disabilities” imposed by Section 3 “are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever” except for members of the 36th and 37th Congresses and certain other military and foreign officials. Note that there is no time limit in this language. Congress even got rid of these remaining exceptions in the Amnesty Act of 1898, which stated that “the disability imposed by section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States heretofore incurred is hereby removed.” There was no language preserving any of the disqualifications for future cases.”