Liberal groups seek to use the Constitution's insurrection clause to block Trump from 2024 ballots
Liberal groups seek to use the Constitution's insurrection clause to block Trump from 2024 ballots
Liberal groups are trying to end Donald Trump's attempt to return to the White House by arguing he's ineligible to be president after trying to overturn the 2020 election.
As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.
The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.
Don't make this into a liberal BS. The GOP scholars were the first one to bring this up. This title is BS.
Huh? Based on this article, two conservative professors gave the issue a boost because of their recently released law review article, but the liberal non-profit (Free Speech For People) has been urging states to do this since 2021:
Though most litigation is unlikely to begin until October, when states begin to set their ballots for the upcoming primary, the issue has gotten a boost from a recently released law review article written by two prominent conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Paulsen. They concluded that Trump must be barred from the ballot due to the clause in the third section of the 14th Amendment.
...
In 2021, the nonprofit Free Speech For People sent letters to the top election official in all 50 states requesting Trump’s removal if he were to run again for the presidency. The group’s legal director, Ron Fein, noted that after years of silence, officials are beginning to discuss the matter.
The first lawsuit to keep Trump off the ballot was filed in New Hampshire this week.
By a GOP presidential hopeful.
Exactly. It would be beyond stupid for "Liberal groups" to try to disqualify him now. He's on track to sail through the primaries and lock up the Republican nomination. Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.
I keep thinking this, though it makes me nervous at the same time. Trump has way more support among Republicans than any of the others, but I think and hope he'd have real problems in the general election. The reason that thought makes me nervous is because I didn't think he had a real shot in 2016, and that turned out to be disastrously wrong. I would so hate to end up with another Trump term.
If he's excluded, then one of the other candidates will win the Republican primary. That person isn't going to have as much support in the primary - that's likely to be a closer race - but night not have as much problem in the general. Ultimately, by and large, Republicans are going to vote for the Republican candidate.
I'm going to be anxious until next November.
Don't let's get arrogant now. He can win the presidency, but only through the complacency of decent people. Remember that his campaign spent money convincing Democrat voters to stay home in 2016 for various reasons from "she's got this locked up, your vote won't make a difference" to "they're all the same anyway". He paid Cambridge Analytica to research the best ways to make you not care.
Scandalous!
Christi? Seems like his whole shtick is bringing Trump down and nevermind getting the nomination.
Traitors who don't believe in our democracy and try to stop the will of the people who voted, should not be allowed in our government. They can't be trusted to keep their oath to the constitution if they broke that oath before.
Text of the relevant section of the 14th Amendment:
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.Edit:
Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxivThe "aid or comfort" clause seems like a decent bet. I'm sure he's publicly stated how much he loves the rioters at least a dozen times.
are republicans libs now?
Def. A minority in terms or population, however gerrymandering and cherry picking boundaries for representatives changes the outcome at the polls.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
“There’s a very real prospect these cases will be active during the primaries,” said Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University, warning that there could be different outcomes in different states before the Supreme Court makes a final decision.
That section bars anyone from Congress, the military, and federal and state offices if they previously took an oath to support the Constitution and “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Trump argues that any effort to prevent him from appearing on a state’s ballot amounts to “election interference” — the same way he is characterizing the criminal charges filed against him in New York and Atlanta and by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and Florida.
On Wednesday, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, of Texas, filed a complaint in a New Hampshire court contending the 14th Amendment barred Trump from that state’s ballot.
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the U.S. — but also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress and taking over the government they had just rebelled against.
The original article contains 1,376 words, the summary contains 238 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It’ll be interesting to see how the courts play this out. Usually the determination of whether someone did or did not engage in an illegal activity is upon conviction by a jury - innocent until proven guilty. Consequences cannot be rendered until that point.
Trump hasn’t (yet) been charged with insurrection specifically, so a conviction on the existing charges likely wouldn’t trigger the 14th Amendments restriction.
“Giving aid or support” could be an interesting argument though, because a few of the J6 participants have been convicted of “seditious conspiracy”, which could maybe fall under the definition of rebellion, and Trump has certainly spoken spoken in support of the participants in general.
I look forward to reading some riveting decisions over the next year.
You're forgetting about civil law. You can face legal consequences without ever being charged with a crime. And nothing in the amendment says a criminal conviction is required to be someone from office.
Criminal cases are ones in which the dispute exists between a private citizen and the government, which is to say that the government has accused the citizen of breaking the governments laws. The government must prove its case beyond a shadow of a doubt, but once it has done so penalties can include the loss of freedom, as the law defines.
Civil cases are disputes between private citizens, one accusing the other of some wrong. Private citizens do not have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, just present a preponderance of evidence. Because civil cases don’t judge the breaking of law, penalties are much less harsh, and revolve around compensating the wounded party for the wrong indicates by the evidence.
Insurrection and rebellion are crimes that, by definition, could only ever be commit against a government. As such they would necessarily have to be tried as criminal cases, and a conviction secured before invoking any loss of freedom as punishment (and on such a conviction, loss of a political campaign would be the least of these).
It is theoretically possible that the federal government could sue Trump for damages from J6, but for that case to be relevant to the 14th amendment it would have to provide evidence that the event that day was indeed an insurrection or rebellion directed by him. That moots the point of a civil suit, however, because if the government had that sort of evidence, it could charge him criminally instead.
Ban the lame bastard from earth.
This is a ridiculous premise. Liberals want Trump on the ticket. It's a guaranteed win for Biden. Republicans want him off the ticket because they can't control him. Of course, Republicans can't be seeing doing this. So they'll make it look like liberals taking out Trump, and they will float desantis as a way to own the libs.
I don't want him on the ticket regardless of what the election situation holds. The rules mean nothing if we don't follow them when it suits us.
Liberals want Trump in prison, not on the ticket. I would happily have virtually any other Republican become president if it meant Trump was never a threat to America again.
So we're just gonna pick and choose what parts of the Constitution that should be upheld?