States may move to keep Trump off the ballot based on 14th Amendment disqualification (1 Viewer)

[superchuck500]

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

There is a growing movement in some states to conclude that Trump is already disqualified under the 14th Amendment and they may remove him from the ballot. This would set-up legal challenges from Trump that could end up at the SCOTUS.

The 14A disqualification doesn’t have any procedural requirements, it simply says that a person that does those things can’t serve in those offices. It a state says it applies to Trump, it would then be on Trump to show that it didn’t (either because what he didn’t doesn’t amount to the prohibited conduct, or that president isn’t an “officer” as intended by the amendment).

States are in charge of the ballots and can make eligibility determinations that are subject to appeal - there is actually a fairly interesting body of cases over the years with ballot challenges in federal court.


More on the legal argument in favor of this:

The Sweep and Force of Section Three

Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Because of a range

papers.ssrn.com

The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again

The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[MT15]

From the above article. Notice the Cline Center is located in that liberal hotbed of the University of Illinois, (which is funny if you’ve ever been to Champaign). Once again, bolding is mine.

“But ongoing investigations by legal authorities, news organizations and the U.S. House of Representatives over the nearly two years since we released our initial classification have revealed credible additional evidence that President Trump was actively involved in attempting to displace the authority of the legislative branch. This new information makes the events of Jan. 6 an attempted auto-coup as well as an attempted dissident coup, according to Cline Center definitions that were first developed in 2013.”

 

[J-DONK]

Dude....

There were guns. That was one of the MAJOR points that separated the Oathkeeper lot from the rest of the rioters. You made 9 billion post on this topic, yet don't know basic facts about Jan 6th? That entire twitter thread is either wrong, or a fantasy.

Oath Keepers jury hears about massive weapon cache on Jan. 6

A member of the Oath Keepers who traveled to Washington before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol testified Wednesday about a massive cache of weapons the far-right extremist group stashed in a Virginia hotel room.

apnews.com

“I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” said Cummings, a veteran who joined the Oath Keepers in Florida in 2020.

Prosecutors have said teams of Oath Keepers guarded the arsenal of firearms and were prepared to rush them into the hands of extremists in the capital if needed.

 

[MT15]

Forgive the multiple posts. This article is well worth the read, IMO. It’s not very long, bolding is mine.

“Why does this additional classification of auto-coup matter?

Labels matter when it comes to political violence because each type has distinctive consequences and implications for societal stability. Coups and attempted coups are among the most politically consequential forms of destabilizing events tracked by Cline Center researchers. While dissident coups are the most common type, making up nearly 30% of our 975 cases, auto-coups are among the rarest at fewer than 5% of cases.

But when auto-coup attempts occur, they tend to succeed far more often than the other types. While the success rate for attempted dissident coups is only 16% – that is, only 16% of dissident coup attempts end up throwing the national leader out of power – the success rate for attempted auto-coups is 75%. This far exceeds the success rate for attempted military coups, the category that probably comes readily to mind for most people, which oust legitimate political leaders 56% of the time.

In addition to better reflecting the historical record, hopefully this new classification also helps people understand just how serious a threat to American democracy the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol actually was.”

 

[MT15]

Dude....

There were guns. That was one of the MAJOR points that separated the Oathkeeper lot from the rest of the rioters. You made 9 billion post on this topic, yet don't know basic facts about Jan 6th?

Oath Keepers jury hears about massive weapon cache on Jan. 6

A member of the Oath Keepers who traveled to Washington before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol testified Wednesday about a massive cache of weapons the far-right extremist group stashed in a Virginia hotel room.

apnews.com

Lots of the insurrectionists were carrying banners about “1776” and “civil war”. They had shirts made. Yeah it was stupid cosplaying at an insurrection, and they were being used by Trump as a means to an end, to delay the vote. But they thought they were going to take over.

 

[billm]

Lots of the insurrectionists were carrying banners about “1776” and “civil war”. They had shirts made. Yeah it was stupid cosplaying at an insurrection, and they were being used by Trump as a means to an end, to delay the vote. But they thought they were going to take over.

Now you can read their minds. lol

 

[MT15]

Now you can read their minds. lol

Don’t have to. They posted their thoughts on FB and Instagram. They testified to it in court in some cases. They made statements to the police. They took videos, they tweeted it out. They were absolutely used by Trump in a very cynical way. He didn’t give a shirt how many of them absolutely ruined their lives and ended up in prison with felony convictions. He needed them to slow down the process so he could try to get his fake electors recognized. Only one person matters to Trump. And it isn’t you or any of his supporters.

 

[Incumbent]

Lots of the insurrectionists were carrying banners about “1776” and “civil war”. They had shirts made. Yeah it was stupid cosplaying at an insurrection, and they were being used by Trump as a means to an end, to delay the vote. But they thought they were going to take over.

Yeah, inciting the mob would have been a deliberate way to create chaos and cover for the smaller group of individuals acting strategically. We know there are reports of communication between members of the Proud Boys / Oathkeepers and contacts with the White House in the days leading up to the J6 insurrection. Key elements of what took place weren’t by coincidence but the plan ultimately failed because of variables that couldn’t be controlled.

 

[billm]

Don’t have to. They posted their thoughts on FB and Instagram. They testified to it in court in some cases. They made statements to the police. They took videos, they tweeted it out. They were absolutely used by Trump in a very cynical way. He didn’t give a shirt how many of them absolutely ruined their lives and ended up in prison with felony convictions. He needed them to slow down the process so he could try to get his fake electors recognized. Only one person matters to Trump. And it isn’t you or any of his supporters.

Why on Earth would I matter to Trump? What are you talking about?

 

[MT15]

Why on Earth would I matter to Trump? What are you talking about?

What I said was you don’t matter. Nor do I, nor does anyone else on Earth. I don’t think his own children matter to him all that much. Maybe slightly more than the people he grifted, maybe.

 

[MT15]

And as predictable as can be, the SOS of Maine is receiving threats after Trump posted her information.

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

they still think insurrection has to be successful to be insurrection..
that there has to be an arsenal to be considered insurrection.
a failed and poorly planned insurrection is still an insurrection.

 

[Taurus]

they still think insurrection has to be successful to be insurrection..
that there has to be an arsenal to be considered insurrection.
a failed and poorly planned insurrection is still an insurrection.

It's like they think you have to actually take over the ship to call it a mutiny.

 

[Incumbent]

And as predictable as can be, the SOS of Maine is receiving threats after Trump posted her information.

Exactly as Trump intended.

 

[J-DONK]

Now you can read their minds. lol

 

[Optimus Prime]

…….Regarding concerns that the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban doesn’t apply to Trump, it’s true that members of Congress who wrote the law were addressing the events that led to the Civil War.

Their goal was to bar people such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis from future government service. So it’s not clear the amendment was aimed at conduct such as Trump’s.


But I’m generally wary of being too deferential to the views of people who lived decades ago and often supported terrible policies very few do today, such as barring women from voting.

Unless there is evidence that the authors of the 14th Amendment would have strongly opposed invoking the provision after a president’s words and actions encouraged an attack on the Capitol that would help him maintain power despite losing the election, we should defer to our present-day views of what counts as rebellion, insurrection and, more broadly, conduct that is unacceptable for a president.

In the 14th Amendment, we have a provision that is already on the books and that might allow us to keep Trump from ever being president again. We should use it.

The argument that doing so would be undemocratic is nonsense.

Democracy is not just elections; it’s also a broader system of rules, laws and norms. Even if you think democracy is mostly about elections, you can’t support having Trump as president again, because he only supports elections if he is declared the winner.

It cannot be a requirement of democracy that you allow the election of leaders who will then end free and fair elections — and therefore democracy itself.
It’s not ideal that Colorado state Supreme Court judges and Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, have unilaterally acted to remove Trump from the ballot. That feels undemocratic.

But in reality, these officials are only stepping in now to enforce democratic principles because for three years, so many others haven’t.


In 2021, the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds vote could have convicted Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” that the House impeached him for. Then, by a simple majority vote, the Senate could have barred Trump from future office (though Trump likely would have contested such a decision in court). Instead, all but seven Republican senators voted against conviction.


Many of these senators claimed that convicting an out-of-office president wasn’t constitutional. In reality, most of them just didn’t want to cross pro-Trump voters in their states.


The Justice Department could have quickly moved to charge Trump with crimes. But Biden entered office determined to show he was above partisanship, so he nominated someone with a similar approach, Merrick Garland, to be attorney general.

The result: The Justice Department conducted a slow-moving, bottom-up investigation of Jan. 6, charging lower-level people who entered the Capitol that day before moving to Trump. I understand that approach; it’s how many investigations go.

But it was fairly obvious in 2021 that Trump would run for president again — in part to cast investigations into him as partisan.


The people who have most shirked their responsibility to defend democratic principles are Republican voters. They were presented this year with a slew of presidential candidates, many of whom are just as conservative or perhaps even more so than Trump, but who did not try to overturn American democracy.

They could have turned to any of those candidates. Instead, they are overwhelmingly sticking with Trump.


I would never vote for a Democratic candidate who tried to overturn an election that a Republican had clearly won. I wish Republican voters would show similar respect for basic democratic principles and their fellow citizens……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/29/trump-ballot-maine-colorado/

 

[J-DONK]

Yeah, inciting the mob would have been a deliberate way to create chaos and cover for the smaller group of individuals acting strategically. We know there are reports of communication between members of the Proud Boys / Oathkeepers and contacts with the White House in the days leading up to the J6 insurrection. Key elements of what took place weren’t by coincidence but the plan ultimately failed because of variables that couldn’t be controlled.

It was pretty clear if they had gotten to Pence, or captured key members of Congress things would have escalated. There was no point in executing their "Order 66" if they never captured their key objectives.

One of the seriously disturbing parts of all of it was the degradation, and failures of the Secret Service. I seriously thought Biden was going, and probably should have handed off all of SS task to the FBI. Then fired the entire branch, and started over. It was that bad. They should have been the first government organization to actually suffer the fate of "splintered into a thousand pieces, and scatter it to the winds."

 

[MT15]

I agree with this. Except I think they wanted a 10-day delay. That is what Flynn suggested it would take to have the military ready to redo the election.

 

[MT15]

Oh, if you go back to the debate over the 14th Amendment, you find that they DID consider President and VP to be officers: