Legal scholars increasingly raise constitutional argument that Trump should be barred from presidency
cnn.com
Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
You are viewing a single comment
Well, this is what the US constitution says:
The question is whether those words apply to his actions, and who exactly has the responsibility to interpret them.
If he's guilty of insurrection he should be accused, put to trial, and if convicted it should follow that he can't run for president anymore.
So your interpretation of the 14th amendment is that "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion" is the exclusive responsibility of the judicial system to determine? Maybe that's a valid interpretation, but it's not actually written in the text.
Ehm, yes it is. It's the text.
Laws don't say "a person who committed a crime, if the fact that this crime has been, in fact, committed by that person, has been decided by a judge, who has previously passed the exam necessary....". Laws imply a few basic assumptions. One assumption is, that every decision by "the government" is in principle dependent on the judicial system.
If the IRS decides, you're a millionaire now and taxes you accordingly, you can go to court and they will decide whether you're actually taxable as a millionaire.
Trump may be deemed a traitor/insurrectionist by Congress/Senate/DOJ or any other body and thus barred from running, but he too can simply go to court and let it be decided - and given that the supreme court is, let's say, rather in his favor, the result is rather obvious.
Trump will use any loophole, any slight formal error to get around this. So you have to have a really water tight case.
Hundreds of rioters and those directly involved with the proud boys have pleaded guilty for their role in the instruction. Many of them giving sworn testimony stating that Trump himself gave them a call to action with his words, tweets and actions.
So even if Trump himself isn't convicted on the charges that he is facing, him giving aid and comfort to those who have already been convicted should itself bar him from public office. (in my opinion - I am not a lawyer)
So what?
I'm not defending Trump, but convicting him, solely because of how others interpreted his messages is extremely dodgy.
Here, again, it's up to judges to decide whether these tweets show intent to send these messages. Could Trump reasonably expect that these tweets would be received as an "order" to storm the Capitol?
Well, if it wasn't his intent, he sure did sit watching it on TV until it was clear that the US government would not be overthrown, instead of swiftly taking action like any other president would when congress is under attack
We had to rely on Pence, hiding in the capitol basement, to actually attempt to manage this thing
Again, so what?
Negligent, sure. But that's not the point.
You keep arguing on a moral level, which is entirely besides the point. The question is: is he guilty of insurrection? Not bad presidenting, not shitty behavior.
It's strong circumstantial evidence that the attack on the capitol (which itself is just a component of his overall objective to illegally overturn the election results) was his intention all along
You don't have to convince me, that's once again beyond the point.
I suppose it would ultimately be up to the supreme court to define what exactly that eligibility requirement (that you basically have to have never tried to overthrow the government) as written in the constitution means, but that doesn't actually immediately involve a conviction of Trump for anything (as "being under the age of 35" doesn't require some sort of criminal conviction)
In the hypothetical scenario, someone would try to remove him from the ballot, and the supreme court would either uphold or reject that based on their interpretation of the language of the amendment
Funny enough, no you can't. The courts don't have any say in that.
There's all kinds of government determinations that have no court remedy. Impeachment, for example, is done solely through congress.
Of course they have. If, say, they decide wrongly that the house you sold is worth 50million and not 50k, you can go to court for that.
Impeachment is a bit of a different beast, since it's done by the governing body - essentially they're making it legal on the fly. But even then, I'm pretty sure, if Congress would have decided in 2013 that Obama can't be president because he's black, there would be an option for the supreme court.
I looked into it and you're right! I was under the impression that you only had the option (after exhausting administrative remedies within the IRS) of paying them and then suing them to recover what you consider the excess amount, but the US Tax Court will take cases where the IRS has not been paid yet.
I think a conviction is the only way to get something even some Republicans will have to agree to. The only other methods I can think of would require the Senate and House to vote against him, and I don't think that's going to happen.
That too, but note that it doesn't say "convicted". There is no requirement for conviction.
So I can just accuse somebody and they're barred from running?
A conviction means a process was followed, evidence was weighed, arguments pro and con were considered.
It says Congress could override it with a 2/3rds majority in both houses, so if Team Red wins a landslide next year, they actually could vote to allow him to run regardless, even if he is actually convicted of something.
That's a terrible thought.