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Critics have argued that President Trump is ineligible to seek public office again because he “engaged in insurrection” against the United States. He easily leads the Republicans even though he has a number of charges against him which he has broadly denied. Opponents on all sides think that under the 14th Amendment, he can’t hold office ever again because of the attack on the Capitol January 6.
Trump leads
He maintains Democrats are targeting him in a non stop witch hunt. This is another tool to keep him from being elected.
Florida tax attorney Lawrence Caplan was the first to notice and mention the Amendment’s “disqualification clause” in a federal court last week. This clause says that those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” cannot hold office.
Trump is non stop
Even though no indictments accuse Trump of inciting the Capitol riot, Caplan insists his disqualification is automatic due to his efforts to challenge the 2020 election.
“The bottom line here is that President Trump both engaged in an insurrection and also gave aid and comfort to other individuals who were engaging in such actions, within the clear meaning of those terms as defined in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Assuming that the public record to date is accurate, and we have no evidence to the contrary, Trump is no longer eligible to seek the office of the President of the United States, or of any other state of the Union.”
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 during the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. The disqualification clause was designed to keep those who had joined the Confederacy from holding office. In theory it also applies to present day insurrections or rebellions against the United States.
Trump plows ahead
Two legal professors who are also members of the Federalist Society thought it still applied. William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote in the Pennsylvania Law Review that the clause “is alive and in force” and if any government official
“planned, supported, assisted, encouraged, endorsed, or aided in a material way those who engaged in the insurrection of January 6, or otherwise knowingly and willfully participated in a broader rebellion against the constitutional system, such persons are constitutionally disqualified from office. In such situations, Section Three’s constitutional disqualifications can, should, and must be carried out.”
The voices that disagree with this see right through it. Alan Dershowitz said, “It would put the decision about who the President is in the hands of local Secretaries of State and Democratic governors, instead of in the hands of the people.” Constitutional law attorney and former Trump ally Jenna Ellis said words are being used deliberately, “The Left is purposefully calling J6 an ‘insurrection’ to justify a baseless 14th Amendment challenge. It’s like baselessly calling election challenges on behalf of a campaign “racketeering” to justify a RICO charge.”
