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

 

[Optimus Prime]

I'd like to have seen Sanchez tell Stetkis that Trump took himself off the ballot when he sat on his arse while an insurrection was happening. "Aid and comfort" yo.

Don't forget the "we love you and you're very special" message

 

[V Chip]

It's hard to take you guys seriously when this is one of your ridiculous excuses for why they didn't charge people with inciting or participating in an insurrection.

And yet they didn't charge Trump or any January 6th defendants with inciting or participating in an insurrection. If it was such an iron clad case as yall claim they would have charged them.

{Shrug} It's legal experts who argue this, not me. Most of them are conservative or centrist at best who say these things, too. so... take it up with them.

An evidentiary hearing and a Secretary of States unilateral decision isn't considered due process in regards to saying someone is guilty of a crime.

Are you saying the Constitution has different definitions of an officer? What are the other definitions of an officer and for what parts of the constitution?

You must not be too familiar with Reason to think they are big Trump supporters. They cite specific things to show what officer means.

No, their main argument in favor of it applies the specific use of "Officer of the United States" to talk about lower level officers. It's different contextually, and they to their credit agree with this in part:

Let's assume that the President is not an "officer[] of the United States" for purposes of the 1788 Constitution. Under that assumption, it is possible that the President might be an "officer of the United States" for purposes of Section 3. Thus, a reader might take the limited position that the President is an "officer of the United States" for the purposes of Section 3.

This position is conceivable.

And that is with the assumption that the President is NOT an officer of the US, which there is no evidence for that broad application.

One thing they do NOT address is that in the 1788 Constitution, every mention of "Officer of the United States" that refers specifically to the lower level officers uses a capital "O" for "Officers" -- while the 14th Amendment does NOT, which shows that there is a difference in meaning to the use in the 14th Amendment.

And again, the idea that they meant it to apply to everyone else in government EXCEPT for the highest office in the country is preposterous.

Let's just look at a discussion during the passage of the 14th Amendment:

It's also worth noting that there was just a single reference in the Senate debate to the fact that the president and vice president were not explicitly mentioned in Howard's draft as "officer(s) of the United States," the way members of Congress and state officials had been itemized in the text. Would the disqualification clause of the amendment not cover the top posts in the executive branch?

"Why did you omit to exclude them?" asked Maryland Democratic Sen. Reverdy Johnson.

Maine's Lot Morrill jumped in to clarify.

"Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,'" Morrill said, ending the discussion on that point.

SCOTUS will strike it down either 8-1 or 9-0. I think it will be 8-1.

OK? I think Washington will win the National Championship.

 

[Farb]

Remember how Rethugs constantly bleat about Trump Derangement Syndrome? Remember also how they reflexively project nearly everything they're guilty of onto their opponents?

Yeah, TDS is real, the sufferers continue to support the cowardly twinkie despite all reason. Truly deranged.

Are we allowed to say TDS on this board now? I thought it was a no-no?

 

[superchuck500]

For one it wasn't an insurrection. It was a riot.

Also, how do you determine someone committed a crime without due process?


I disagree. It was a riot. If it was an insurrection, why didn't Jack Smith charge Trump with inciting or participating in an insurrection?


I know it says officer and that's what I've posted multiple times. Where did I say it said office?

The 14th ammendment says officer and not office. I'm unclear about what your point is.

Yes I'm aware what that case is about, but it talks about what officer means in the Constitution.

In Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd. (2010), Chief Justice Roberts observed that "[t]he people do not vote for the 'Officers of the United States.'" Rather, "officers of the United States" are appointed exclusively pursuant to Article II, Section 2 procedures. It follows that the President, who is an elected official, is not an "officer of the United States."

...Moreover, there is some good authority to reject the position that Section 3's "officer of the United States"-language extends to the presidency. In United States v. Mouat (1888), Justice Samuel Miller interpreted a statute that used the phrase "officers of the United States." He wrote, "unless a person in the service of the government, therefore, holds his place by virtue of an appointment by the president, or of one of the courts of justice or heads of departments authorized by law to make such an appointment, he is not strictly speaking, an officer of the United States." Justice Miller's opinion, drafted two decades after the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification, is some probative evidence of the original public meaning of Section 3's "officer of the United States"-language. Miller's opinion is some evidence rebutting any presumption of post-1788 linguistic drift with respect to the phrase "officer of the United States." Likewise Mouat rebuts the position that, circa 1868, the obvious, plain, or clear meaning of the phrase "officer of the United States" extended to the presidency.

The Executive Branch has long relied on Justice Miller's discussion of "officers of the United States" in Mouat. In 1943, Attorney General Francis Biddle cited Miller's opinion, and explained that "under the Constitution of the United States, all its officers were appointed by the President . . . or heads of departments or the courts of law." (emphases added). Biddle's reading of Mouat did not distinguish "officers of the United States" as used in a statute from "officers of the United States" as used in the Constitution. In 2007, the Office of Legal Counsel reaffirmed this position. The Executive Branch has long taken the position that the phrase "officers of the United States" does not extend beyond persons appointed pursuant to Article II, Section 2 procedures. A memorandum by the Biden Administration's OLC or an argument by House managers that the President is an "officer of the United States" would be in tension with prior DOJ memoranda.

Justice Miller and the Department of Justice are not alone. There is additional evidence that is roughly contemporaneous with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. During the 1876 impeachment trial of William Belknap, Senator Newton Booth from California observed, "the President is not an officer of the United States." Instead, Booth argued, the President is "part of the Government." And David McKnight's 1878 treatise on the American electoral system reached a similar conclusion. McKnight wrote that "t is obvious that . . . the President is not regarded as 'an officer of, or under, the United States,' but as one branch of 'the Government.'" These sources tend to rebut any argument in favor of post-1788 linguistic drift with respect to the phrase "officer of the United States." Likewise, these sources provide some evidence that in the period following the Civil War the phrase "officer of the United States" did not extend to elected positions, including the presidency.

So far, advocates for Section 3 disqualification of President Trump have not advanced comprehensive or systematic evidence that the President is an "officer of the United States." They have the burden to establish that the "officer of the United States"-language of Section 3's jurisdictional element extends to the presidency. They should also rebut the evidence we have put forward in this post (and elsewhere, on many prior occasions).

Is the President an “officer of the United States” for purposes of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Update: In December 2021, Seth and I published an article in the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, based on this blog post. You can download our article

reason.com

Sorry I haven't responded further to your point about 'officer' in our earlier exchange - holidays and whatnot. Note that below, I also address your question about the Free Enterprise Fund case that you and @FullMonte raised wherein the SCOTUS supposedly ruled that the president is excluded from Section 3 coverage (it does not).

Specifically to the cited post, yes, the advocates of Section 3's application to Trump (and anyone having previously taken a constitutional oath and then meaningfully participating in the Trump effort to prevent the transfer of presidential power to Biden by use of extra-constitutional means) have indeed explained why the presidency is an officer within the meaning of Section 3. Notably, that very question was discussed in the congressional debate (Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess. at 2899 (1866)) and the question of whether it applied to the president (as some members voiced concern that it was potentially ambiguous as to that point and should not be) was satisfied to the result that it did indeed so apply.

The most logical and plain-language reading of to whom it applies to is those positions in the Constitution that require an oath . . . in other words, if you previously took an oath because the Constitution required it, you are ineligible from serving again in an oath-required position (because you violated that oath by engaging in insurrection):

Thus, in general: If the original Constitution required an oath for a position, Section Three treats having held such a position as the trigger for Section Three’s application. And if a person who once held any such position is disqualified under Section Three for engaging in or supporting insurrection, that person is barred (absent congressional relief) from holding any of those same positions plus disqualified from being an elector for President and Vice President. That seems to be the basic structure of the provision.

This is not simply making connections - this is sound legal construction applying the procedures and hierarchies of authorities and plain language. I have only cited the conclusion paragraph and I encourage you to read the full piece (linked below), or at least the relevant section for 'officer' that begins on page 104. But it would indeed be perverse to say that a Senator who swore an oath under the Constitution and then participated in insurrection is ineligible to be president under Section 3, but the president who swore an oath under the Constitution and then participated in insurrection is not barred by the provision.

And in that piece (again, written by conservative Federalist staff writers, law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen and William Baude, former Roberts clerk, director of the Constitutional Law Institute at University of Chicago and considered a top and most-cited constitutional conservative of his time), the authors devote four pages to criticizing and rejecting the analysis put forth in the piece you cited, by Josh Blackman and Seth Tillman.

This refutation, beginning on p. 107 elaborates on the following points:
First: [the Blackman/Tillman argument] adopts precisely the type of “secret code” hidden-meanings hermeneutic we think should be viewed extremely skeptically. Moreover, the code has a facially implausible consequence: an insurrectionist President is not covered by Section Three’s disqualification (though nearly every other federal or state officeholder is); the President is (perhaps?) a disqualified-from office but not a disqualification-triggering office. This makes little sense.

Second: the argument rather implausibly splits linguistic hairs. No one denies that the President is an executive branch officer holding executive office. At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Article II refers to the “office” of President innumerable times. It specifies the length of term for which the President “holds his Office,” certain minimum qualifications for eligibility “to that Office,” what happens upon the President’s removal “from Office,” or inability to discharge “the Powers and Duties of said Office,” and the oath he shall take before entering “on the Execution of his Office.”391 If the Presidency is not an office, nothing is.

Third (previously mentioned): a variant of the Blackman-Tillman argument was explicitly made and explicitly refuted in the congressional debates proposing Section Three.

Fourth: in an additional piece of prepositional jujitsu, Blackman and Tillman tellingly equivocate about whether the President holds “office under” the United States as well. (If he does, Section Three stops covered insurrectionists from becoming President, and if not, not.) Blackman and Tillman do not deny this possibility, but they do not confirm it either. The difficulty for them is that both answers show the implausibility of their position. If Blackman and Tillman maintain that the President does not hold “office under” the United States, then they must fly in the face of the directly on point discussion between Senators Johnson and Morrill. They must claim to understand Section Three better than its framers. This seems unlikely. But if they confirm that the President does hold “office under” the United States, then they must maintain a sharp and crucial distinction between “office under” and “officer of.” As Mark Graber has observed, this distinction was also contradicted by Section Three’s framers: “[T]he members of the Congress who framed Section 3 of the 14th Amendment often indicated—and sometimes explicitly stated—that all persons who held office ‘under the United States’ were officers ‘of the United States.’ During the debates over Section 3, no representative or senator alluded to the existence of a distinction between ‘of’ and ‘under’. Representatives and senators often described the president as having an ‘office under the United States’ and being an ‘officer of the United States.’” Professor Graber notes further that a “unanimous House select committee report issued barely a month after Congress sent the 14th Amendment to the states concluded that ‘a little consideration of this matter will show that ‘officers of’ and ‘officers under’ the United States are ‘indiscriminately used in the Constitution.’’”

https://akhilamar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Sweep-and-Force-of-Section-Three.pdf

Finally, as noted above, I have read the Free Enterprise Fund case, 561 US 477 (2010) and it is most certainly not authoritative on the question of application of Section 3 to a person that was president and now wishes to be president again. The case involved a discreet question of whether Congress can create executive boards with members that are not only insulated from removal by the president but also insulated by removal from an agency executive - to which the Court concluded that such an arrangement violates the Appointments Clause and the overall spirit of Article II.

Any discussion of "officer" in the case is entirely within the context of the Appointments Clause, which defines the president's right to appoint the executive officers of the executive branch. As noted in the Baude/Paulsen piece, Section 3 is broader than the language in the Appointments Clause and includes broader language, referring to "office" and then to officer.

In other words, Roberts's analysis for the majority in Free Enterprise Fund is inapposite - it doesn't address or attempt to address anything beyond whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board created under Sarbanes-Oxley violated the Appointments Clause. And because the usage in Section 3 is quite different, I think the impact is negligible. It might, in the end, be part of support for a broader interpretation that reaches a similar result, but it doesn't answer the question - nor does it create a presumption.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

So, now that Trump has appalled the decision to SCOTUS, are they required to take it up under original jurisdiction?

 

[superchuck500]

So, now that Trump has appalled the decision to SCOTUS, are they required to take it up under original jurisdiction?

I don’t think it’s original jurisdiction because it doesn’t fit that description. But the SCOTUS has ordinary appellate jurisdiction over any case heard all the way through to ruling by the highest state court. It’s rare and must raise an important issue beyond the single state . . . which this would certainly appear to do.

But it can go straight to SCOTUS, doesn’t have to go to district court as a federal question case.

 

[FullMonte]

Don't forget the "we love you and you're very special" message

For me, the bigger issue was the picture of the draft of the speech with "You don't represent us" lined out.

 

[brandon]

Sorry I haven't responded further to your point about 'officer' in our earlier exchange - holidays and whatnot. Note that below, I also address your question about the Free Enterprise Fund case that you and @FullMonte raised wherein the SCOTUS supposedly ruled that the president is excluded from Section 3 coverage (it does not).

Specifically to the cited post, yes, the advocates of Section 3's application to Trump (and anyone having previously taken a constitutional oath and then meaningfully participating in the Trump effort to prevent the transfer of presidential power to Biden by use of extra-constitutional means) have indeed explained why the presidency is an officer within the meaning of Section 3. Notably, that very question was discussed in the congressional debate (Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess. at 2899 (1866)) and the question of whether it applied to the president (as some members voiced concern that it was potentially ambiguous as to that point and should not be) was satisfied to the result that it did indeed so apply.

The most logical and plain-language reading of to whom it applies to is those positions in the Constitution that require an oath . . . in other words, if you previously took an oath because the Constitution required it, you are ineligible from serving again in an oath-required position (because you violated that oath by engaging in insurrection):

Thus, in general: If the original Constitution required an oath for a position, Section Three treats having held such a position as the trigger for Section Three’s application. And if a person who once held any such position is disqualified under Section Three for engaging in or supporting insurrection, that person is barred (absent congressional relief) from holding any of those same positions plus disqualified from being an elector for President and Vice President. That seems to be the basic structure of the provision.

This is not simply making connections - this is sound legal construction applying the procedures and hierarchies of authorities and plain language. I have only cited the conclusion paragraph and I encourage you to read the full piece (linked below), or at least the relevant section for 'officer' that begins on page 104. But it would indeed be perverse to say that a Senator who swore an oath under the Constitution and then participated in insurrection is ineligible to be president under Section 3, but the president who swore an oath under the Constitution and then participated in insurrection is not barred by the provision.

And in that piece (again, written by conservative Federalist staff writers, law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen and William Baude, former Roberts clerk, director of the Constitutional Law Institute at University of Chicago and considered a top and most-cited constitutional conservative of his time), the authors devote four pages to criticizing and rejecting the analysis put forth in the piece you cited, by Josh Blackman and Seth Tillman.

This refutation, beginning on p. 107 elaborates on the following points:
First: [the Blackman/Tillman argument] adopts precisely the type of “secret code” hidden-meanings hermeneutic we think should be viewed extremely skeptically. Moreover, the code has a facially implausible consequence: an insurrectionist President is not covered by Section Three’s disqualification (though nearly every other federal or state officeholder is); the President is (perhaps?) a disqualified-from office but not a disqualification-triggering office. This makes little sense.

Second: the argument rather implausibly splits linguistic hairs. No one denies that the President is an executive branch officer holding executive office. At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Article II refers to the “office” of President innumerable times. It specifies the length of term for which the President “holds his Office,” certain minimum qualifications for eligibility “to that Office,” what happens upon the President’s removal “from Office,” or inability to discharge “the Powers and Duties of said Office,” and the oath he shall take before entering “on the Execution of his Office.”391 If the Presidency is not an office, nothing is.

Third (previously mentioned): a variant of the Blackman-Tillman argument was explicitly made and explicitly refuted in the congressional debates proposing Section Three.

Fourth: in an additional piece of prepositional jujitsu, Blackman and Tillman tellingly equivocate about whether the President holds “office under” the United States as well. (If he does, Section Three stops covered insurrectionists from becoming President, and if not, not.) Blackman and Tillman do not deny this possibility, but they do not confirm it either. The difficulty for them is that both answers show the implausibility of their position. If Blackman and Tillman maintain that the President does not hold “office under” the United States, then they must fly in the face of the directly on point discussion between Senators Johnson and Morrill. They must claim to understand Section Three better than its framers. This seems unlikely. But if they confirm that the President does hold “office under” the United States, then they must maintain a sharp and crucial distinction between “office under” and “officer of.” As Mark Graber has observed, this distinction was also contradicted by Section Three’s framers: “[T]he members of the Congress who framed Section 3 of the 14th Amendment often indicated—and sometimes explicitly stated—that all persons who held office ‘under the United States’ were officers ‘of the United States.’ During the debates over Section 3, no representative or senator alluded to the existence of a distinction between ‘of’ and ‘under’. Representatives and senators often described the president as having an ‘office under the United States’ and being an ‘officer of the United States.’” Professor Graber notes further that a “unanimous House select committee report issued barely a month after Congress sent the 14th Amendment to the states concluded that ‘a little consideration of this matter will show that ‘officers of’ and ‘officers under’ the United States are ‘indiscriminately used in the Constitution.’’”

https://akhilamar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Sweep-and-Force-of-Section-Three.pdf

Finally, as noted above, I have read the Free Enterprise Fund case, 561 US 477 (2010) and it is most certainly not authoritative on the question of application of Section 3 to a person that was president and now wishes to be president again. The case involved a discreet question of whether Congress can create executive boards with members that are not only insulated from removal by the president but also insulated by removal from an agency executive - to which the Court concluded that such an arrangement violates the Appointments Clause and the overall spirit of Article II.

Any discussion of "officer" in the case is entirely within the context of the Appointments Clause, which defines the president's right to appoint the executive officers of the executive branch. As noted in the Baude/Paulsen piece, Section 3 is broader than the language in the Appointments Clause and includes broader language, referring to "office" and then to officer.

In other words, Roberts's analysis for the majority in Free Enterprise Fund is inapposite - it doesn't address or attempt to address anything beyond whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board created under Sarbanes-Oxley violated the Appointments Clause. And because the usage in Section 3 is quite different, I think the impact is negligible. It might, in the end, be part of support for a broader interpretation that reaches a similar result, but it doesn't answer the question - nor does it create a presumption.

A fine wall of text that no doubt will remain unread by this forum's conservatives.

 

[superchuck500]

So, now that Trump has appalled the decision to SCOTUS, are they required to take it up under original jurisdiction?

I don’t think it’s original jurisdiction because it doesn’t fit that description. But the SCOTUS has ordinary appellate jurisdiction over any case heard all the way through to ruling by the highest state court. It’s rare and must raise an important issue beyond the single state . . . which this would certainly appear to do.

But it can go straight to SCOTUS, doesn’t have to go to district court as a federal question case.

The jurisdictional statement in Trump's writ is 28 USC 1257, which is appeal to SCOTUS after full adjudication by the highest state court.

28 U.S. Code § 1257 - State courts; certiorari

www.law.cornell.edu

 

[MT15]

The jurisdictional statement in Trump's writ is 28 USC 1257, which is appeal to SCOTUS after full adjudication by the highest state court.

28 U.S. Code § 1257 - State courts; certiorari

www.law.cornell.edu

What do you think this SCOTUS will do? They punted Roe back to the states, could they do that here?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Despite hand-wringing mainstream media coverage calling it "controversial," the most remarkable aspect of the debate over whether Donald Trump should be banned from accessing the ballot is how one-sided it is. Once you start reading about legal arguments on each side, what becomes swiftly clear is there is no good argument for keeping Trump in the race.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, as both Colorado's Supreme Court and Maine's secretary of state have correctly decided, is clear in its language: Anyone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the U.S., after taking an oath of office, is forbidden from running again.

There's no use pretending Trump didn't engage in insurrection in his two-month campaign to overthrow an election. Even Trump's lawyers don't really contest that he did it, which is why they resort to a nonsensical argument that the presidency isn't an office of the United States. This is an obviously dumb argument from people who are out of ideas.

Most arguments for allowing Trump on the ballot rely on treating the Constitution's clear guidance as merely optional. They claim it's vaguely "undemocratic" to deny Trump supporters their number one pick going into the election. This also falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.

Even more Americans would like a chance to vote for Barack Obama again, but he can't run because of term limits. Millions would love to vote for Taylor Swift, but she isn't old enough. If those minor restrictions can be honored, surely the much more pressing need to keep a man who is running to end democracy off the ballot is valid.

As Perry Bacon of the Washington Post noted, "The real affront to democracy is Trump, not officials following laws intended to keep people like him from gaining power." He also reaffirms this is not a "partisan" claim, as no one is trying to boot Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. or former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C. from the ballot.

So bereft of any legal argument for keeping Trump on the ballot, there is always the argument of last resort: Taking their butt-smelly orange master off the ballot will draw a "backlash" from MAGA.

There are two camps making this argument: outright Trump supporters and bed-wetting centrists who don't want to face up to the fact that we live in perilous times that require unprecedented action to save our democracy.

Of the first camp, there is little to say. They're Trump supporters and therefore incurably dishonest. The latter, however, is gaining traction with their short-sighted stance that prioritizes their immediate fear of being yelled at over the long-term dangers to our democracy. For instance, Jonathan Chait of New York offered a typical knock-kneed argument, writing that disqualifying Trump "would be seen forever by tens of millions of Americans as a negation of democracy."...........

Fear of "backlash" is no reason to let Donald Trump on the ballot

Don't negotiate with MAGA terrorism

www.salon.com

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

What do you think this SCOTUS will do? They punted Roe back to the states, could they do that here?

if so, that would be a BIG loss for Trump...

 

[superchuck500]

What do you think this SCOTUS will do? They punted Roe back to the states, could they do that here?

No, I think it's quite different. The SCOTUS holding in Dobbs was that the Court no longer agreed that there was indeed a right (express or implied) to abortion in the U.S. Constitution. Because the federal government is limited and all other power is reserved to the states, where there is no basis in federal law for a right, it is not a federal matter and falls to the states for regulation.

Here, the question is whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment serves as a proper basis for a state to exclude Trump from its presidential election ballot. I think the question goes directly to interpreting Section 3 and its application (or not) to Trump based on his efforts after he lost the 2020 election. States cannot add additional eligibility requirements for the office of the President, so it isn't a matter that can be reserved back to the states. I think the Court will take the case because it does raise a prompt dispute of federal importance based on interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and I think it will rule that it applies to Trump or it does not (for what could be a number of different reasons, some of which could be procedural). But I don't think the Court will (or even can) say it's a matter for states to decide.

 

[superchuck500]

What do you think this SCOTUS will do? They punted Roe back to the states, could they do that here?

Here is an interesting article in the Post today, where different legal scholars comment on what they think the Court might do. I think that the idea that the Court truly does not want to decide this case and will try to avoid it if it can - until after the election - is extremely persuasive. The problem, though, is that there is quite a long time between now and then, and there are likely to be more states with this issue coming to the Court.

Here's a free link to the article:

https://wapo.st/3S6AVUn

 

[Optimus Prime]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — A petition filed by five voters on Thursday seeks to bar former President Donald Trump from the Illinois Republican primary election ballot in March, claiming he is ineligible to hold office because he encouraged and did little to stop the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The petition, similar to those filed in more than a dozen other states, relies on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits anyone from holding office who previously has taken an oath to defend the Constitution and then later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country or given “aid or comfort” to its enemies.

The 87-page document, signed by five people from around the state, lays out a case that Trump, having lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, fanned the flames of hardcore supporters who attacked the Capitol on the day Congress certified the election results. The riot left five dead and more than 100 injured..........

MSN

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

I like this description better.

 

[MT15]

I had forgotten that McConnell called it an insurrection that very night.