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]

No I don't agree that democracy is on the line. He said that because he's mocking Democrats that claim democracy is on the line while supporting authoritarian measures like removing a presidential candidate from the ballot.

Actually what he said sounds like a call for violent action to me. Twitter is full of MAGAs calling for civil war right now. I was surprised that you would post that, as irresponsible as it is.

 

[MT15]

Do the police usually open doors and lead the insurrectionists through buildings like the videos I showed above?

The videos you are talking about were people being led out of the building as they cleared it. I cannot even fathom how you can pretend to not understand what happened that day.

BLM protests that turned into riots were pretty spontaneous as I recall. Jan. 6 was meticulously planned with the express intent of stopping the official count of the electors. People were armed and planned to break into the Capitol. This has all been proven in court. You should read some of the accounts. If you cannot stand to read news accounts just read the court findings. It’s all out there.

 

[MT15]

Trump’s lawyer says CO Supreme Court Justices may be held criminally and civilly liable for their vote.

“Jesse Binnall, an appellate attorney for Donald Trump, warned that a "real" Department of Justice would federally prosecute Colorado State Supreme Court justices who voted to remove the former president from the state's primary ballot.

During an appearance on Real America's Voice on Wednesday, Binnall slammed the court's decision to disqualify Trump based on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prevents anyone who participated in an insurrection from holding office.

Binnall told the conservative network that there was a way a future Department of Justice could punish the Colorado justices with federal prosecution and civil rights laws. He suggested a "real" DOJ would take action against the Colorado justices and "other judges" if Trump won the 2024 election.

"And what needs to happen is there are already federal statutes on the books about violation of civil rights and the color of law," he explained. "Every single one of these people, and [when] we actually have a real Department of Justice, should be held to account for their decision to throw our justice system into the fire, effectively, and leave the rule of law that has made our country so special over the years, and instead decide to make decisions based on politics and not the law."

"There needs to be accountability," Binnall added.”



MAGA is really panicking.

 

[MT15]

These people are just crazy.

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

Actually what he said sounds like a call for violent action to me. Twitter is full of MAGAs calling for civil war right now. I was surprised that you would post that, as irresponsible as it is.

And here we go:

 

[superchuck500]

It's hard to take that argument seriously when people claim that the BLM riot when they tried to take over the federal courthouse wasn't an insurrection. I don't think it was an insurrection or January 6th. But according to the logic the left uses then the BLM riots trying to take over the federal courthouse would be an insurrection.

What do you think about the videos that have been released recently that showed the Capital Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd that was gathered in front of the Capital. It seems like they were trying to provoke a reaction.

Do the police usually open doors and lead the insurrectionists through buildings like the videos I showed above?

What was this supposed purpose of taking over the courthouse?

 

[V Chip]

But if it is overturned, then we will know that the originalists on the Supreme Court are simply political lackeys.

We already know this. This would just cement it and remove all doubt.

 

[brandon]

It's hard to take that argument seriously when people claim that the BLM riot when they tried to take over the federal courthouse wasn't an insurrection.

This is such a joke of a false equivalency.

There was no intent to overthrow the government by “taking over” the courthouse.

 

[MT15]

What was this supposed purpose of taking over the courthouse?

And while he’s at it, maybe he could refresh my memory. What courthouse and where? What exactly took place? I remember some idiots trying to set a fire outside of a courthouse at one point. But it was a stone building and wasn’t affected. Maybe there was another instance?

I do seem to remember some real ugliness in Michigan, but that was MAGA.

 

[Booker]

Over half of Americans approve of Colorado ruling to bar Trump from state’s ballot: poll

Over half of Americans approve of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling to bar former President Trump from the state’s primary ballot, citing the 14th Amendment, according to a YouGov poll released Wednesday. The online survey, published just a day after the ruling, found that 54 percent of...

www.yahoo.com

 

[SystemShock]

And while he’s at it, maybe he could refresh my memory. What courthouse and where? What exactly took place? I remember some idiots trying to set a fire outside of a courthouse at one point. But it was a stone building and wasn’t affected. Maybe there was another instance?

I do seem to remember some real ugliness in Michigan, but that was MAGA.

That'd be the Portland, Oregon courthouse, which was practically sieged and set on fire by BLM members and other protesters. It may be a stone building and it wasn't affected, but there were people inside. Definitely not BLM's finest hour. That's attempted murder.

But, attacking a courthouse in Portland, OR in an attempt to remove federal law enforcement from Portland, OR is not equivalent to attacking the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

That'd be the Portland, Oregon courthouse, which was practically sieged and set on fire by BLM members and other protesters. It may be a stone building and it wasn't affected, but there were people inside. Definitely not BLM's finest hour. That's attempted murder.

But, attacking a courthouse in Portland, OR in an attempt to remove federal law enforcement from Portland, OR is not equivalent to attacking the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.

Ah, yes. Here it is. Hm, I have been assured that nobody was ever charged with crimes for any of the riots during the summer of 2020.

18 Arrested, Facing Federal Charges After Weeknight Protests at Federal Courthouse in Portland

www.justice.gov

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

It's hard to take that argument seriously when people claim that the BLM riot when they tried to take over the federal courthouse wasn't an insurrection. I don't think it was an insurrection or January 6th. But according to the logic the left uses then the BLM riots trying to take over the federal courthouse would be an insurrection.

What do you think about the videos that have been released recently that showed the Capital Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd that was gathered in front of the Capital. It seems like they were trying to provoke a reaction.

Do the police usually open doors and lead the insurrectionists through buildings like the videos I showed above?

When one of the BLM rioters runs for President, then it'll be applicable.
And sure, i have no doubt there were some people/officers at the Capitol that day that sympathized with the insurrection. Just because some were let in, doesn't mean they still didn't take part in the insurrection..

 

[Optimus Prime]

On Tuesday, the Colorado State Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 4-3, that Donald Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot for the upcoming Republican primary.

The court found that Trump engaged in insurrection and, under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, is disqualified from holding public office again, and thus cannot appear on the Republican primary ballot in Colorado.

The judges stayed the ruling until January 4, 2024—the point at which Colorado is supposed to submit its primary ballot—in case the Supreme Court of the United States would like to intervene.

The Supreme Court will almost certainly intervene. And, just to be plain about it, the conservative-controlled court will almost certainly rule that Trump is allowed on the Colorado ballot. It would be wrong for anybody to get their hopes up: Republican-appointed justices are incredibly unlikely to kick the presumptive Republican nominee off of a presidential ballot.

But the Colorado opinion is designed, at least, to make the Supreme Court look very ugly and partisan when it bends over backward to save Trump and preserve his ability to threaten the country. That’s because the Colorado opinion is grounded in two things the Republicans on the court claim to hold dear: textualism and states’ rights.

For true textualists, the text of Section 3 couldn’t be more clear. It says, in full:

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.

It doesn’t say “convicted” of insurrection. It doesn’t say “unless it makes Jonathan Chait uncomfortable.” It says what it says: Government officers who engage in insurrection cannot be officers of the government again.

Donald Trump engaged in insurrection. That’s not me saying it, or Jack Smith saying it; that’s what the first court to hear this case, the Colorado state court, ruled at trial a few weeks ago.

The trial court found that Trump engaged in insurrection, but twisted itself into an illogical knot to say that Section 3 didn’t apply to Trump because he was the president of the United States, and not an “officer” of the United States.

That was silly. Most of what the Colorado State Supreme Court did in its 215-page opinion unraveled that logical inconsistency, and applied a more accurate interpretation of Section 3 and Colorado state law to the facts (that Trump is an insurrectionist) that were found by the trial court. If the 14th Amendment means what it says, this isn’t a controversial opinion, legally speaking. Insurrectionists cannot hold office again.

If the US Supreme Court intervenes and overrules Colorado, not only will it be going against the plain text of the 14th Amendment; it will also be trampling over Colorado’s right to interpret its own state laws.

As you may have heard, “states’ rights” is kind of a big thing in conservative circles.

Remember, it’s conservatives who think states have the right to gerrymander away the voting power of racial minorities because of “states’ rights.” They think the states can limit voting hours and deny early voting because of “states’ rights.”

In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the federal government can’t even use the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act to stop the Confederate states from changing their voting laws back to Jim Crow procedures meant to disadvantage Black voters… because of “states’ rights.”……….

Annoying, but not insurmountable. Despite the fact that the text of the law, conservative ideology, and some of the justices’ own words are on the side of Colorado in this case, I fully expect the Republicans on the Supreme Court to ignore all that and restore Trump to the Colorado ballot.

You see, the problem with beating conservatives at their own game is that they don’t care about their own rules. It’s easy for them to make up new rules that contradict the old ones, as they go along, because they are not bound by principle. They’re only concerned about power.

There are many ways the conservatives can wriggle out of their own ideology now that their so-called logic no longer helps them.

Perhaps they’ll read “convicted” of insurrection into the amendment, even though that word doesn’t exist in the text.

Perhaps they’ll say that the case is not “ripe”—which in legalese means that the case is not ready for the court to make a ruling on—because it deals only with the primary ballots and not the general election ballots.

Perhaps they’ll say we’re “too close” to an election to follow the rules (they’ve done that before)…….

The conservatives will likely kill this, quickly, in the next few weeks. They will look bad doing it, but they’re appointed for life and know that elected Democrats lack the will to police their conduct. The main upshot will likely be that the staff at Mar-a-Lago has to clean a lot of ketchup off the walls during this holiday season………

The Colorado Court’s Ruling Banning Trump From the Ballot Is Sharp as Hell

While the ruling will be overturned by the Supreme Court, the conservative justices will have to tie themselves into a knot to do it.

www.thenation.com

 

[UriUT]

I don't think yall are familiar enough with the right wing rhetoric. I have family that dwells in that ecosystem, (redstate.com, drudge, comes to mind) and they regularly throw this out. That BLM courthouse incident has been used to demonstrate 1. BLM and left wingers' violent tendencies and lawlessness and 2. as a whataboutism to Jan 6.

And some of you are forgetting the context of that incident. I'm not saying that assaulting the courthouse is justified, but there was context. We have a user here that reported the peaceful nature of those BLM protests until Trump enflamed it by sending in DHS agents (Immigration agents). There were reports from those arrested that some agents were unidentified and masked while using unmarked vehicles. At times they would snatch protesters leaving the protest that was otherwise peaceful.

That incident and what he did in DC, particularly the fake church photo opportunity that angered Milley, showed Trump's autocracy. That is what's at risk here.

DHS sent more than 750 federal officers, spent millions responding to Portland protests

A new report finds DHS was unprepared when out-of-town federal law enforcement officers first arrived in the city. But the inspector general found DHS did have the legal authority to send officers to protect federal property.

www.opb.org

“Officers from FPS, CBP, and ICE all responded to Portland wearing their respective component issued uniforms,” federal officials stated. “During the operations both citizens and Congress raised concerns regarding a lack of proper identification on officers’ uniforms.”

“This report confirms some of the worst fears I expressed along with the delegation about Donald Trump’s slapdash and knee-jerk response to last summer’s overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Portland,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Paramilitary officers dispatched by the Trump administration into my hometown with incomplete weapons training, inconsistent tactics and a shadowy mission added up to a toxic mix that inflamed the situation instead of managing it.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/19/892826853/like-adding-gasoline-oregon-officials-blast-trump-response-to-portland-protests

In a tweet, Trump blamed Portland's officials for failing to control the situation. "We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it," Trump said. "Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!"

State and local officials say that the situation in Portland had been improving over several weeks. Speaking to Weekend Edition, Wheeler called the federal government's actions an "attack on democracy" that inflamed an already tense situation. Among the protesters, a "small handful" were engaging in criminal activity, Wheeler said, but "it was dissipating. It was calming down."

"I see guys in camo," O'Shea said. "Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, 'Oh s***. I don't know who you are or what you want with us.'"

Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least Tuesday. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation about why they are being arrested, and driving off.

Trump admin defends use of federal agents in Portland protest crackdown

Homeland Security officials defended their use of riot control tactics and unmarked vehicles as part of the department’s response to another night of unrest in Portland.

abcnews.go.com

On Monday, President Donald Trump threatened to deploy more federal agents in cities "run by liberal Democrats" although he did not offer specifics on what might come next.

"I'm going to do something -- that, I can tell you," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "Because we're not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these -- Oakland is a mess. We're not going to let this happen in our country."

 

[superchuck500]

That'd be the Portland, Oregon courthouse, which was practically sieged and set on fire by BLM members and other protesters. It may be a stone building and it wasn't affected, but there were people inside. Definitely not BLM's finest hour. That's attempted murder.

But, attacking a courthouse in Portland, OR in an attempt to remove federal law enforcement from Portland, OR is not equivalent to attacking the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.

I think it's all about the purpose. Another example is when the ranchers led by the Bundy family occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. This was a political act - and a protest. They took over federal property in protest of what they view as federal agency activity (mainly by the Bureau of Land Management) that exceeded the agency's authority - and was supposed to result in eventual relinquishment of authority to the western states.

This wasn't insurrection. There was no attack on a fundamental operation of government that if successful, would have derailed (even if temporarily) a function essential to the American constitutional system. The only question for the feds was how long to allow them to hold it and how to best arrest them without causing a violent incident.

The same elements are associated with racial injustice protests, even as some of them became violent and destructive - and aimed to occupy federal property. But January 6 is not the same. The purpose of January 6 was to rally Trump's supporters to march down to the Capitol to intimidate and influence by threat of violence or actual violence a disruption of the electoral count process that happens on January 6 by federal law as a component of the constitutional system for electing a president. And the purpose of this was to keep the count from happening so that the president that lost the election could have more time to continue to attempt to manipulate the process or the officials involved so that he could remain president despite having lost the election.

There are two questions in this case: whether Section 3 applies to the presidency and whether what Trump did constitutes participating in insurrection. It's possible that the Court concludes that those activities weren't insurrection - though this seems to be substantially in question and for good reason. It's quite possible that the Court decides the first question and then doesn't have to decide the second because it certainly has many of the elements of what we would think insurrection is.

But equating it to BLM or Malheur is totally off the mark.