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Trump: Disqualification from Office?
There is currently a theory circulating that state election officials should remove Trump from the 2024 presidential ballots because he committed insurrection on J6.
The text of the 14th Amendment Section 3 is…
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.
There are at least five reasons why this section does not apply to Trump:
- He didn’t commit insurrection or rebellion or give aid and comfort to enemies of the US. No one has been found guilty of any of those acts in connection with J6, and even the special counsel didn’t charge him with one of those acts. Trump said to protest peacefully. Enough said.
- The president and vice president are not officers of the United States. Officers are those senior officials appointed by the president, not the president himself.
- Trump cannot be deprived of his privileges and immunities without due process of law (Section 1 of the 14th Amendment). There has to be a legal process to exclude anyone from the ballot. State election officials cannot decide to do it on their own volition.
- Congress has the power to enforce the provisions of the 14th Amendment by legislation (Section 5 of the 14th Amendment). States don’t have the power to enforce the 14th Amendment.
- The Amnesty Act of 1872 removed the disqualification of section 3 for all but a specific list of people. True, there is some question whether this removal applies to people who did not participate in the Civil War but later on participated in insurrection, etc., but the language of the statute is quite broad and applies to “all persons whomsoever” except a stated list of officials:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each house concurring therein), that all political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.
If state election officials start excluding people from the presidential ballot, despite the clear language of the 14th Amendment, it will lead to utter chaos in all elections.
Published in Elections
If a state did that it would be directly taken up by the SCOTUS.
I’m sure we’ll see a lefty-loony state election official exclude Trump from the ballot, and it will go to the Supreme Court. It’s discouraging how leftists are wrenching some constitutional clause completely out of context due to their TDS. This is a course that will not end well.
And what difference will that make if the ballots have been mailed out?
There is time for Trump and the RNC to prepare to get an injunction before ballots are mailed out.
One can hope.
And hope the judge isn’t a Democrat.
Even if the trial judge is a Dem and rules against Trump, it would inevitably go to SCOTUS, and I think 5 (maybe even 6 if Roberts could drop his TDS) would vote for Trump.
Yes, one can hope.
Not vote for Trump, uphold the Constitution.
The Democrats have a better chance of getting Trump off the ballot by coming clean on their cheating. Then they can claim that Trump has been elected twice and is ineligible under the 22nd amendment. “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”. It doesn’t say anything about serving as President.
Trump is recognized as being elected in 2020, Biden still got to destroy the country, and now Trump is ineligible. Winning all around for the Democrats. Nothing was done to secure our elections in the troublesome states so 2024 won’t be any better. Arizona even got additional practice in 2022.
And Trump gets to finish out this term and the culprits plea deal for ten years of solitary. That’s a deal Trump would be wise to take.
Chaos is the objective. Chaos leads to crisis. Crisis is the opportunity for extraordinary powers. Extraordinary powers is how you get an official one-party state “to save democracy”.
Very interesting. But probably prevented by Vice President Pence counting the Electoral Votes in January 6, 2021. Technically that was the “election”, not the vote to select the various state electors committed to candidates. So, no, even with an admission of cheating, factually, legally, Trump has been elected only once by the Electoral College.
It could be argued that the Russia Collusion Hoax was an act of insurrection. Further, since Obama/Biden signed off on the actions that would make Biden ineligible for public office. Red states, do the thing!
And yet, that seems to be where we are headed. The current lawfare against Trump and people who have supported him is telling.
Clever, however, I believe the language of the 22nd Amendment says a President may serve “two terms” or “ten years.” So if he got to start serving his second term today, he could be elected again for the full four years.
EDIT: Okay, so actually, the language says:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
So they can’t be elected more than twice, but they could manage to serve up to ten years if they succeeded to the office with two years or less remaining of the previous President’s term.
It would come down to insisting that Trump was elected and isn’t merely succeeding Joe Biden. Which would be a hilarious argument for the Democrats and NeverTrumpers to make.
The Russia Collusion Hoax being one among many acts of insurrection against the President.
Add to that Pelosi’s acts related to Trump’s impeachment for a telephone call clearly geared to trying to uncover dealings by American citizens and government officials that were operating against American interests including a military officer undermining his Commander-in-Chief, followed by Pelosi again making decisions to undermine the security of the Capitol and the Congress for Jan 6. A lot of elected Republicans must be complicit in these actions.
YES!
Just add a little COVID, then . . .
Two of the biggest proponents of using the 14th Amendment to remove Trump from the ballot are Federalist Society members. TDS is a helluva drug.
The article in question can be found here.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751
It is quite long. I read some and skimmed some and blew past many pages of it.
My impression is they have an argument so the SOS in some states are going to run with it but I think it will ultimately fail. As in the OP I don’t think the 14th applies to the president or vice president and having 50 different states and courts rule on whether Jan 6 was insurrection and who engaged in it is just not workable or reasonable. Around page 117 and onward its clear to me that this paper is full of motivated reasoning as allegations are accepted as indisputable fact.
Speaking of motivated reasoning, If one accepts the “expansive ” definitions and “broad sweep” of the 14th amendment overriding previous amendments such as the 1st, I would stretch it further and ban Kamala Harris from the 2024 ballot. After all, she gave aid and comfort to the insurrectionists of the summer of 2020 by urging support for the bail fund that sprung them. Stupid but it makes me smile.