Why the Rushed Maneuver to Expedite Trump’s Trial Faces Failure

Trump has ALREADY been found to have incited and engaged in insurrection by BOTH house of Congress:

02/08/24 – Congress has already disqualified Trump from the ballot –

…There are two factual questions at the core of this case: Was January 6 an insurrection and did Trump “engage” in it?

Fortunately, the Supreme Court need not look far for answers to these questions. They can simply look across the street at the Capitol, where majorities of both chambers of Congress already found that January 6 was an insurrection and that Trump not only engaged in it but “incited” it.

This may come as a shock. When, one might ask, did Congress ever hold such votes?

Those votes came in the second impeachment of Trump, in January and February of 2021, in which majorities of both the House and the Senate backed an article of impeachment against Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”

This was a finding of fact, by majorities of our elected representatives, after a full public trial in which Trump was able to mount a defense — and it should be deemed persuasive, if not conclusive, in answering the factual questions before the Supreme Court. Indeed, for the more right-wing justices, who are often fond of pontificating that courts should not make policy judgments and should instead defer to legislatures, one would think that such a clear public pronouncement from Congress on Trump’s engagement in insurrection would be a compelling precedent.

To be clear, the 14th Amendment does not actually require anyone to have voted to disqualify an insurrectionist, whether that’s a legislature or a jury. It certainly does not require a conviction, as some have tried to argue (and such bastardization of the plain language of a constitutional provision is exactly the opposite of what conservatives normally preach).

Legally, the insurrectionist is disqualified the moment he engages in insurrection. Though “innocent until proven guilty” is a familiar standard in criminal law, it shouldn’t apply to disqualifying someone from public office, since holding office is a privilege, not a right. Indeed, the courts in Colorado found Trump engaged in insurrection, and that alone was legally sufficient for Trump to be ruled ineligible there.

Yet if we are going to look for some additional fact-based determination on whether Trump engaged in insurrection — especially one that can be applied nationally — Congress has already provided us with one, and the Supreme Court should look no further…

The Senate voted 57–43 to convict Trump of inciting insurrection. While this fell short of the 2/3 majority necessary to convict him for impeachment purposes, a majority DID agree he had incited insurrection. After the vote, Mitch McConnell stated in the congressional record that there was no doubt Trump was practically and morally responsible for inciting the riot at the Capitol. He said he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.[76]