The ballot disqualification part is cool and all, but isn’t the bigger deal a legal ruling saying yes it was obviously an insurrection and yes he obviously incited it?
This decision was about whether the whole “not being allowed on the ballot if you incite an insurrection” thing was intended to apply to the president, or just everyone else. That’s a weird discussion to have after deciding a leading presidential contender obviously tried a coup. I’d really prefer we focus back on the coup part, and maybe less on the intentions of 150+ y/o lawmakers.
This decision was about whether the whole “not being allowed on the ballot if you incite an insurrection” thing was intended to apply to the president, or just everyone else.
Obviously, by any rational reading of the English language. But law is about arguing over what things that seem obvious actually mean, and this was slapping down a lower court that was arguing that it did NOT mean what it obviously means.
“The decision reverses a ruling by a lower court judge who found Trump engaged in insurrection by inciting his supporters to violence, but concluded that, as president, Trump was not an “officer of the United States” who could be disqualified under the amendment. The Biden campaign declined to comment.”
From the Constitution, Article II Section 1:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years… :
… No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office…
… Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States…
But sure. The person running the Executive Office of the President is not, in fact “an officer”…
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Sure but the intentions of people long dead doesn’t need to come into it, is my point. We can apply the law as it makes sense in the context of the present.
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What will happen next? I assume the (federal) supreme court will simply shoot it down. But I’d love to hear other opinions!
https://learnconlaw.com/78-the-disqualification-clause goes into this in detail - the short answer is that the federal supreme court will probably rule that the amendment doesn’t specifically call out the president as a person who can be disqualified and overturn the decision.
There is an argument to be made that the president is a “federal officer” so the ruling does stand, and that the intent was to bar confederates from public office so it would be weird to read the law as disqualifying a person from low level state office but not from the presidency, but it seems unlikely that the court would choose to do that given how partisan it is
There is an argument to be made that the president is a “federal officer” so the ruling does stand
What’s the argument that he’s not a federal officer? Basically everything in the Constitution refers to the office of the presidency, so claiming the president isn’t an officer sounds like some bullshit that idiots would come up with. Which makes sense why the republicans are trying that.
The argument that could be made is that in most of the rest of the constitution, anything that involves things the president can or can’t do explicitly says “the president”, so having an extensive list of positions that could be disqualified that doesn’t mention the president by name implies that the president isn’t included.
It’s not a good argument, and I suspect in saner times it would be pretty clear that the intent is that Trump can’t run.
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As a foreigner I am surprised it took this long. Will likely not lessen the support for Trump, but nearly nothing will at this point.
As a foreigner who’s spent a lot of time in America, this may actually be good for Trump. I am not 100% sure how elections work in the US, but at most this will keep his name off a ballot Trump would never win and at best it will ensure his name has to be on every ballot. Assuming the SCOTUS overturns it, it sets a precedent that the POTUS is not an officer and therefore isn’t included in any legal language that concerns officers. Which opens up expansion of the powers of the executive. Still assuming that the SCOTUS overturns it it could play right into the Project 2025 playbook.
Thank you for posting the full decision. I love checking the primary sources. Relevant points from the summary:
• The Election Code allows the Electors to challenge President Trump’s status as a qualified candidate based on Section Three. Indeed, the Election Code provides the Electors their only viable means of litigating whether President Trump is disqualified from holding office under Section Three.
• Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.
• Judicial review of President Trump’s eligibility for office under Section Three is not precluded by the political question doctrine.
• Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency and someone who has taken an oath as President. On this point, the district court committed reversible error.
• The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting portions of Congress’s January 6 Report into evidence at trial.
• The district court did not err in concluding that the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection.”
• The district court did not err in concluding that President Trump “engaged in” that insurrection through his personal actions.
• President Trump’s speech inciting the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not protected by the First Amendment.
As I’m reading this further, I have to say, this ruling is full of so much spiciness that I’m surprised the media hasn’t reported on it more. A few of my favorites so far (emphasis mine):
• If the Presidency is not an “office . . . under the United States,” then anyone impeached—including a President—could nonetheless go on to serve as President. This reading is nonsensical
• When interpreting the Constitution, we prefer a phrase’s normal and ordinary usage over “secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.”
• While nothing in Representative McKee’s speeches mentions why his express reference to the Presidency was removed [from the final draft of the 14th Amendment], his public pronouncements leave no doubt that his subsequent draft proposal still sought to ensure that rebels had absolutely no access to political power. Representative McKee explained that, under the proposed amendment, “the loyal alone shall rule the country” and that traitors would be “cut[] off . . . from all political power in the nation.”
• Representative McKee desired to exclude all oath-breaking insurrectionists from all federal offices, including the Presidency
They even went so far as to reference the fucking dictionary for those saying Trump never took an oath to support the Constitution.
• The language of the presidential oath—a commitment to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”—is consistent with the plain meaning of the word “support.” U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 8. Modern dictionaries define “support” to include “defend” and vice versa. See, e.g., Support, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/support
They do go on to quote the dictionary again (both from the 1800s and the current version) to define what an “insurrection” is, then say:
We have little difficulty concluding that substantial evidence in the record supported each of these elements and that, as the district court found, the events of January 6 constituted an insurrection.
Also, love how they basically reference what we all saw live here:
Moreover, contrary to President Trump’s assertion that no evidence in the record showed that the mob was armed with deadly weapons or that it attacked law enforcement officers in a manner consistent with a violent insurrection, the district court found—and millions of people saw on live television, recordings of which were introduced into evidence in this case—that the mob was armed with a wide array of weapons.
God damn. Some more spice in a quote about whether or not Trump “engaged in” insurrection since he wasn’t actually in the mob:
[I]t is not necessary to prove that the individual accused, was a direct, personal actor in the violence. If he was present, directing, aiding, abetting, counselling, or countenancing it, he is in law guilty of the forcible act. Nor is even his personal presence indispensable. Though he be absent at the time of its actual perpetration, yet if he directed the act, devised or knowingly furnished the means, for carrying it into effect, instigating others to perform it, he shares their guilt. In treason there are no accessories.
My tinfoil hat theory is that the district judge did not want to be responsible for keeping trump off the ballot, be it safety for her/her family, or that it is such a momentous event that she did not feel comfortable bearing that weight alone. So she came up with this “not specifically references” conclusion as a soft punt to the state supreme court.
Makes sense. Had it been just her that ruled against him, Trump would’ve cast her as an activist Biden puppet. But now that the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against him instead, it’s harder to paint that picture.
Still, I don’t like the idea of judges being intimidated to rule in a way they know to be incorrect just so an appeals court can take the blame.
This kind of news gets you in the Christmas spirit! Cheers!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
DENVER (AP) — The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War.
It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
After a weeklong hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump indeed had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and her ruling that kept him on the ballot was a fairly technical one.
“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,” attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court in early December.
The original article contains 639 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Given that Colorado isn’t a swing state, does this actually matter in practical terms?
It feels very much like a political show of sorts. Trump wasnt gonna get the CO vote regardless. Similar to how in kind, Texas is threatening to remove Biden from the ballot. Texas is gonna be a red vote no matter who is running until at least the boomers and gen xers die off.
Right, so it’s basically just theatre for the base.
Exactly.
Great idea, ban the frontrunner of the only other viable Party from running for office, this won’t have any consequences at all!
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You think election denialism was bad before? Just wait until it’s literally illegal for Trump to get elected lol
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Trump should have faced consequences years ago. They waited too long and now he’s running for president again.
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Perfectly valid action to take when that front runner is a traitor to the nation he swore to serve.
I didn’t say it wasn’t valid.
I said there will be consequences.
If that’s true then people votes should decide that, if you don’t believe the people then the nation is doomed
Than let everybody vote too. But I guess you’d agree that it wouldn’t be a good idea, right?
Nazi apologists gonna apologize
People don’t elect the president, land does. So sure, let’s let him run once 1 person = 1 vote. Until then, fuck the traitor, land shouldn’t get to put someone in office that tried to perform a soft coup.
The solution is quite simple: don’t break the oath of the office
Texas is talking about taking Biden off the ballot.
This country is barely hanging on dude
This is exactly why this is a terrible idea from the get-go. This will just embolden every state to pick and choose who they want on a ballot.
Edit: Just to add onto the point a little bit… Take note of how many red states there are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
Now imagine that 100% of them now push Blue off the ballots all together. And the ones that are light, could force a dark reddening, Blue would NEVER win an election ever again. Just letting a court choose to define what happened on Jan 6 as an insurrection leaves this problem on the table. It’s also against the American motto of Innocent until proven guilty to just let a court decide that without trial and jury. None of the current cases against Trump have the “insurrection” as a charge, so he’s never been guilty of it… including the impeachment. Find him guilty, like the southern office holders, then you have a case. But jumping the gun like this just makes you all look looney tunes and opens the doors to all sorts of abuse that WILL NOT work in your favor.
What’s the point what’s the point of having an election if we’re just going to ignore the laws anyway?
The laws that say he can run for office are also on the same constitution that say he’s no longer elligible, what is this cherry picking laws nonsense?
His base is already primed to believe the election is stolen. Making it literally illegal for Trump to be on the ballot will have serious consequences.
Great idea, don’t hold former presidents to account when they attempt to subvert democracy, that won’t have any consequences at all!
If they wanted to hold him to account they’d have charged him immediately after the insurrection, rather than waiting for the next election. Why did they wait so long? Now he’s campaigning and can use every decision against him to rally his supporters into a frothing mob.
You mean like the impeachment or any of the trials we’ve had for his criminal behavior? Yeah, why didn’t they do that immediately??? And while we’re at it, why does the legal system move so slowly???
You mean like the impeachment or any of the trials we’ve had for his criminal behavior?
The insurrection-based charges were dropped from every single one…
The impeachment was literally nothing.
What I mean is that he could have been arraigned much earlier. They slow walked the charges so that he’d have time to become the frontrunner in order to sabotage the GOP. This isn’t just the law moving slowly, this is a political strategy to ensure Biden’s reelection.
This will only result in his cult becoming radicalized.
Hopefully they don’t get violent.
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Federal courts just move slowly. Any of the current cases against Trump taking less than 6 years would be an anomaly. That’s not an endorsement of our current system of justice, far from it.
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Trump notoriously uses delay as his primary legal tactic; Has done for decades.
His lawyers have taken every opportunity to take legal actions doomed to “fail” because they knew they would gum up the works and move trial dates further back. They have argued at every turn for delays, and are currently complaining about being told to work over the holidays because a judge gave them strict deadlines for filing briefs in Trump’s own appeal which has paused all actions in the case until it is resolved.
(The appeal is that Trump has “absolute immunity” and therefore can’t even be tried, let alone convicted, for any crimes he may have committed while president. It’s absurd on its face)
Federal courts just move slowly.
The J-6th rioters got court hearings and sentences before Trump was even brought up on charges. That’s telling.
Now it’s too late and he’s the frontrunner. By taking so long they might destabilize the country.
The prosecuted J-6th rioters actually entered the capital building, committed crimes with their own hands on camera, or spent months prior to the insurrection explicitly (in writing) organizing people to do things like kidnap Nancy Peloci and kill Mike Pence.
Those are easier cases to make, and those defendants filling court records with defenses of “I was just following the orders of my president” help build a case against Trump himself.
The “Imminent lawless action” standard in first amendment jurisprudence is a harder one to meet than most people realize. There’s reasonable precedent to say that enough time passes between Trump inciting his croud to insurrection and them actually doing it that it doesn’t meet the “imminent” standard. It’s not in any way an easy case to make and win.
There are many federal and state cases against Trump right now, and to say that they’ve been intentionally slow-walked to cooencide with the election is to ignore the years of litigation that have already happened in most of them.
Not at all. Trump’s case is much more difficult and he has used far more delay tactics. It’s a bit similar to preparing a case for a mob boss vs for a foot soldier.
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