by Jack Phillips
An attempt to disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on 2024 presidential ballots based on a theory derived from the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was dismissed by a prominent law professor on Tuesday.
A theory that has recently been floated in the media claims that the former president could be blocked from ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment via the Disqualifications Clause, which states that individuals who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” cannot hold office. Proponents of the claim say that President Trump engaged in “insurrection” during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach.
But George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley stated that the new theory is “not simply dubious but dangerous.”
“The amendment was written to deal with those who engage in an actual rebellion causing hundreds of thousands of deaths,” Mr. Turley told Fox News.
“Advocates would extend the reference to ‘insurrection or rebellion’ to include unsupported claims and challenges involving election fraud.”
The professor, who had served as an expert impeachment witness in favor of Republicans defending President Trump, said he didn’t favor the former president’s speech on Jan. 6. However, he said that the Jan. 6 incident was merely “a protest that became a riot” and not an insurrection against the United States.
“According to these advocates, Trump can be barred from the ballot without any charge, let alone a conviction, of insurrection or rebellion,” Mr. Turley said.
Mr. Turley added that he views that some people who proposed the theory also “argue that there is no action needed from Congress” and that “state and federal judges could just bar those who are deemed as supporting rebellion through their election challenges and claims.”
Over the weekend, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a former Democratic vice presidential candidate, stated that there was a “powerful argument” for barring President Trump under the 14th Amendment.
“The language (of the amendment) is specific: If you give aid and comfort to those who engage in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States—it doesn’t say against the United States, it says against the Constitution. In my view, the attack on the Capitol that day was designed for a particular purpose … and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the Constitution,” he told ABC News.
The former president has long denied Democrat allegations that he initiated a riot or insurrection at the Capitol. He has often pointed to a portion of his speech on Jan. 6 where he called on rally attendees to “peacefully and patriotically” protest.
Also, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who had promoted often false claims that the former president colluded with the Russian government during his administration, also said that the disqualification theory “fits Donald Trump to a T” during a recent MSNBC interview. He also cited the incident at the Capitol on Jan. 6, again claiming it was an insurrection led by President Trump.
Some Democrats, including state officials, have said that the theory likely doesn’t hold water.
Among them, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told a podcast several days ago that the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that there is “no statutory process in federal law to enforce Section 3 of the 14th amendment” and that “you can’t just enforce it.”
“That’s what the Arizona Supreme Court said, so that’s the state of the law in Arizona. Now, do I agree with that? No, that’s stupid,” Mr. Fontes said, saying that he disagrees with the ruling but would follow the law in that case.
Other than Mr. Turley’s comment to Fox News, another constitutional scholar and political science professor told ABC News that the 14th Amendment theory faces an uphill battle.
The 14th amendment was never going to prevent President Trump from winning reelection. It is a fools errand to think otherwise.
As the AZ Supreme Court stated, there does not exist any statutory process to enforce the cited portion of the amendment.
democrats are very stupid.
But Democrats don’t think the laws and the Constitution stand in their way to do whatever they want to do. So, rest assured, some state will knock Trump off the ballot and there will be lawsuits, but the election will go forth and the issue will be unresolved. Afterwards, the Democrats will be proven wrong, but, like in 2020, the damage will have been done.
This is how Democrats like to rule: by edict. They don’t want the interference of rules, laws, tradition or the Constitution, they just want to do what serves their political agenda (socialism, totalitarianism, fascism, a police state) without the encumbrances of the rule of law. Because, the rule of law distinctly contradicts their goals.
Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden has been such a total disaster, is so corrupt, has committed so much treason that it will take a level of election fraud in 2024 to win that would make 2020 look like it was fraud free (it wasn’t). To try and avoid that, they need to eliminate the most formidable foe they could face, Trump. If he’s eliminated, they’ll have to eliminate the #2 contender as well… and so on. It won’t… it CAN’T end with Trump.
In July of 2020, ANTIFA laid siege to a federal courthouse in Portland. Now, they weren’t “protesting” anything done in the courthouse, they were violently trying to destroy federal property because it represented the federal government. By the logic of these cowardly Democrats, every Democrat in office at that time should be barred from seeking office because, by refusing to condemn the violence, by pretending the violence wasn’t happening, by justifying the violence, by failing to prosecute the terrorists, they have provided aid and comfort to the terrorists and insurrectionists. By showing that leftist terrorists will not be prosecuted and punished, they all encouraged further violence and, indeed, it continued for months, the siege on this courthouse going on for days.
Now its time to apply the 25th Amendment and Impeach Biden the Democrats cant ignore it anymore
Not as dangerous as the possibility that the angry egomaniac in question might return to power.
PRIMER ON WHY THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, SECTION 3 DOES NOT BAR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FROM RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY
A handful of law professors,1 many in the so-called “elite” media,2 their TV popularizers,3 and, of course, leftwing participants in social media4 have whipped themselves into a frenzy on a vague hope that President Trump cannot be allowed to run for President a third time. Why? Because of January 6, 2021. Their narrative is that “Jan 6” is an “insurrection” or “rebellion,” which is why the shorthand version of that date has been branded and effectively trademarked as political coin of the realm. Newsweek has gone so far as to say that the U.S. Supreme Court may imminently take up a case on this issue, which is a claim out of touch with reality.5
The arguments trying to stop Trump from going on the ballot are wrong both as a matter of law and as a matter of nationally adjudicated fact. The contrary claims represent yet another instance of the unrelenting “lawfare” being waged on President Trump. Beyond that, the political advocacy launched against Trump is terrible legal policy and, ironically, profoundly antidemocratic. The proponents of these claims would steal from voters the ability to debate and decide for themselves the candidate in the 2024 election that they want to become the forty-seventh President of the United States.
The Text of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 3
Begin with the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. Two provisions are relevant:
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.
***
Section 5
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment has three elements: (1) demonstration that an individual took one or more federal or state oaths of certain kinds that (2) the individual broke by participating in an insurrection or rebellion; and then, as a result, such an individual is barred from holding (3) a defined list of federal offices.
In popular circles, including on social media, there is a tendency to play a game of word scrambling with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 3 to stir and edit down all of these elements together to read Section 3, counterfactually, as if it said this: ‘Anyone associated with a claimed insurrection/rebellion is barred from holding any federal office.’ In reality, the text of this constitutional provision requires careful parsing, and the word goulash popularizers would cook up is a vast mischaracterization of what Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment actually says.
In terms of the order in which the elements are presented, the text of Section 3 can be condensed a bit for quick analysis into two halves: The first half sets out which positions a purported insurrectionist/rebel cannot hold if the second half of Section 3 is satisfied. The second half sets out what types of oaths for which prior positions such a purported insurrectionist/rebel needs to have broken to be barred from holding one of the listed positions.
At this point, the first thing to key into about Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is that a bar on becoming the President of the United States, in particular, is notably absent. Instead, here are the positions that someone who “shall have engaged in insurrection against the [United States Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” are barred from holding, if they have previously taken an oath to uphold the Constitution (numbering added): “[1] Senator or [2] Representative in Congress, or [3] elector of President and Vice-President [i.e., not the President or Vice President themselves], or [4] … any office, civil or military, under the United States, [5] or under any State.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 3 (emphasis added).
It makes no sense for the Framers to have left out explicit reference to the President and Vice President, if they intended to include them via the side door of a general, back-end reference to “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” Id. The only proper conclusion of basic textual analysis is that the President and Vice President were seen as unique officials who would continue to be chosen in the fashion the Constitution provides. And that system is one in which the Electoral College alone is empowered to decide, consistent with state law for choosing electors sent to that College, who could hold the two highest governmental positions in the land. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers knew how to draft with precision. And they knew that if they had wanted to bar all potential insurrectionists/rebels from holding any federal office (broadly conceived), the text of Section 3 could have been pared down, and there would have been no need to call out Senators, Representatives, or electors specifically.
This conclusion is reinforced still further by noting that purported insurrectionists/rebels are specifically barred from being electors of the President and Vice President. The fact that potential electors set up to vote for President and Vice President are explicitly referred to as barred from holding their separate positions, but no one is explicitly barred, under the same circumstances, from becoming President or Vice President is glaring. It would make no sense to imagine the Framers thought it necessary to reference the electors of the President and Vice President but not refer to those federal positions themselves, leaving the President and Vice President perhaps to vaguely fall only into the general category of “officer[s] of the United States.” Id.
Read more here:
Section 3 could have been specifically written to remedy Trump’s efforts to overturn the constitutional electoral process by fraud and violence. If elected, Trump could only take office lawfully if both Houses of Congress voted to remove the constitutional obstacle by 2/3 majorities.
Trump’s tools are devoting attention to undermining the meaning of Section 3 because they know damn well this is true.
There is no special unstated exception to “no person” for Donald effin’ Trump, nor is there any special unstated exception to “any office, civil or military” for the office of president.
The 14th amendment would require a conviction of insurrection to disqualify President Trump if it applied. It does not apply to President Trump as he was acquitted by the senate 57-43 in 2021.
The article of impeachment specifically was insurrection. Even bidens Fbi refused to call j6 an insurrection.
Trump’s rigged impeachment trial in the Senate is irrelevant. As McConnell observed afterward, “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
If Trump is convicted of January 6 charges in criminal court, he will be disqualified from holding any federal or state office, by a provision of very Constitution he chose to ignore.
If Trump is convicted of January 6 charges in criminal court, he will be disqualified from holding any federal or state office, by a provision of the very Constitution he chose to ignore.
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.
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment has three elements: (1) demonstration that an individual took one or more federal or state oaths of certain kinds that (2) the individual broke by participating in an insurrection or rebellion; and then, as a result, such an individual is barred from holding (3) a defined list of federal offices.
The impeachment charges brought against President Trump as a result of January 6 were equally explicit in concluding that the events of January 6 constituted an insurrection. A majority of the House of Representatives approved (232 to 197) an article of impeachment charging then-President Trump with “incitement of insurrection” for the events of January 6th. The Senate’s vote to convict Trump of this charge, while falling short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution’s impeachment process, constituted a substantial majority (57 to 43) of the Senate endorsing the House’s charge and characterization. Majorities of both houses of Congress thus determined—at least twice—that January 6th was an insurrection; and in the impeachment proceedings majorities of both houses determined that Trump was responsible for having incited that insurrection.
They provide no response, however, to the obvious point that whatever majorities in both houses of Congress said, and while a majority in the House was enough to impeach (i.e., accuse President Trump of participating in an insurrection), a majority in the Senate is insufficient to convict President Trump of that accusation. Ergo the accusation failed, that result is preclusive of all relevant constitutional questions that would seek to undermine his acquittal, and President Trump cannot be barred from running for or attaining the presidency again.
That conclusion is not rocket science. Maybe the professors thought that if they buried a discussion of the second impeachment acquittal on page 114 out of a total of a 126-page law review article, no one would notice. Nice try, but not hardly likely.
Second, the House Impeachment Managers in 2021 tried to show that President Trump had encouraged violence (which would be paradigmatic conduct giving “aid and comfort”) at the Capitol on January 6. But President Trump’s defense lawyers at the second impeachment provided the full context of what Trump said at his speech on the Ellipse on January 6, 2021 to successfully rebut this claim: Trump — “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Brian Naylor, Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, a Key Part of Impeachment Trial, NPR (Feb. 10, 2021), available at https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial (emphasis added) (last visited Sept. 9, 2023).
Urging protestors to make demands but to do so peacefully and patriotically is the exact opposite of providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. Hence, any line of attack that President Trump falls within Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment because he purportedly provided aid and comfort to rebels or insurrectionists similarly collapses and is totally precluded by his acquittal at his second Senate impeachment trial.
The arguments that President Trump can be barred from running in 2024 or taking office as the forty-seventh President in 2025 are weak and shot through with errors. They should be given no credence.
There is no “defined list of federal offices”. It clearly and unambiguously states “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State”. That’s an all-inclusive statement.
If convicted, Trump could not lawfully assume “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State”, without the obstacle being removed by a 2/3 majority vote of both the House and Senate. Nothing could be more clearly stated.