Two top Democrats backed on Sunday the theory that former President Donald Trump could be disqualified from running under the 14th Amendment, Axios reported.
Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff of California and Tim Kaine of Virginia backed the idea that Trump could be blocked from the 2024 ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which maintains that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” cannot hold elected office, according to Axios.
Free Speech For People, a Democratic-aligned group, also sent letters to secretaries of state in key 2024 states last week claiming Trump should be removed from the ballot.
BREAKING: Today, we @FSFP + @MiFamiliaVota issued letters to the chief election officials of five more states (FL, NH, NM, OH, and WI) making clear that they must enforce the constitutional mandate of 14.3 and bar Trump from the ballot. https://t.co/x03mpZlF8F
— John Bonifaz (@JohnBonifaz) August 30, 2023
Schiff said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” that the disqualification “fits Donald Trump to a T.”
“If you engage in acts of insurrection or rebellion against the government, or you give aid and comfort to those who do, you are disqualified from running,” Schiff said. “It doesn’t require that you be convicted of insurrection. It just requires that you have engaged in these acts.”
Kaine told ABC News there is “a powerful argument to be made” for disqualification.
“In my view, the attack on the Capitol that day was designed for particular purpose at a particular moment, and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the Constitution,” he said, noting that “it’s probably going to get resolved in the courts.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called the idea of disqualifying Trump under the 14th Amendment “the single most dangerous constitutional theory I have seen pop up in decades” during a Fox News segment on Aug. 22.
Hans von Spakovsky, Election Law Reform Initiative manager and senior legal fellow for The Heritage Foundation, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Section 3 of the amendment “is no longer in effect because Congress passed two amnesty acts in 1872 and 1898 as it is allowed to do under that Section to remove the disabilities imposed by Section 3.”
“Moreover, Donald Trump has never been convicted of ‘insurrection or rebellion’ by any court and not by Congress either in the impeachment proceedings that were attempted against him,” Spakovsky said.
“These attempts to disqualify him from the ballot are unconstitutional.”
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson previously told the DCNF that allowing state officials to determine what constitutes insurrection on their own would “wreak havoc on our constitutional presidential electoral system.”
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