Florida Lawyer Sues Trump to Disqualify Him From 2024 Race
uphillbothways@kbin.social to 
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.
A Florida lawyer is suing Donald Trump in an attempt to disqualify his current run for president. Lawrence A. Caplan’s Thursday lawsuit claims that the ex-president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would make him ineligible to run again, thanks to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—a Civil War-era addition aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office. “Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case,” the lawsuit says, also citing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history. “Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
archive link to South Florida Sun Sentinel article: https://archive.ph/1BntD
Anyone who says that the election was rigged, and insists on it after being proven false over and over again, well..... if that doesn't prove malice, then I don't know what will.
He could just argue that he's such an idiot he thought it was true despite the evidence.
...except for statements about Pence being too honest which kind of show he knows he was trying to seize power illegally.
To reach that kind of level of Idiocy would be unthinkable, knowing that you have the power of a U.S. president.
It would have been before. Now, I'm not entirely sure.
My point is that it's not idiocy. To be idiocy, it has to be extreme idiocy, and this is isn't it.
This guy is not surrounded by noobs. I'm sure he asked the right people whether the elections were legitimate, and he didn't like the answer. Or he was just following a soviet-era book of rules handed over to him by who knows who. In either case, it's not idiocy. It's malice.
To be fair, it's more selfishness than malice.
Does the reason change the crime?
Yes. Mens rea
Malice isn't what needs to be proven. I'll get voted down for saying this but it's far from proven that trump "engaged in insurrection".
He just did everything he could to encourage it and then watched on TV for over an hour giddy that it was happening, refusing to make a statement to call them off, when everyone he knew was begging him to. Yep totally innocent.
Stop it. I'm not defending Trump.
How do you think the legal system works? The prosecutor just says "c'mon your honor he totally did it" and the judge and jury just say "yep, totally"?
I think the legal system works exactly that way for poor/black people but for white people you buy your way out of jail.
Probably because that's been demonstrated a seemingly infinite number of times
And yeah what you wrote was a textbook defense, no only in the legal sense but in an everyday sense too.
What about rebellion?
The term you are looking for is mens rea and from what we already know from the January 6th committee, Jack Smith has Trump dead to rights in that respect.
He also almost certainly has additional evidence that the committee didn't get and that we don't know about yet.
It's not looking good for Trump which is exactly why he's desperate to delay the trial until after the election in hopes that he wins and can make it all go away.
I'm surprised I even have to say this as I thought it was common knowledge regardless of one's political persuasion.
Also, I didn't downvote your comment.
In many other countries, insurrection gets you a nice brick wall and a blindfold. In America, you get to run for President (again).
Except the trial for the insurrection is just barely starting, not to mention all the other indictments. Yes, he wasn't immediately locked up and should have been. Yes, he's being treated differently because he's rich, but it's not like nothing is happening.
For real. I'm really jealous that the courts in Brazil have already banned Bolsanaro from running for office for the next 10 years and Pakistan's parliament ousted Khan for being ungenerous to the Ukraine conflict and then later the police arrested him for bribery. Those are supposedly developing countries but they are doing a better job of controlling their tyrannical despots than we are. Fortunately, like I keep saying, Trump has too much work cut out for him to effectively campaign with so many charges. He's been in the lead, but I don't know if he can stay that way.
That's... Really interesting tbh.
You're equating being a developed nation with the best thing ever, and expecting that if you're the most developed nation you are also the best at treating social issues, and are therefore a bit confused when you see how other less developed countries can treat these issues better.
But when we get right down to it, development has no real reason to also mean "just" or "lawful", right? I mean - "developed" means having a good economy, right? And when googling about it, the Human Development Index(HDI) comes up as well. But if we break it down, having money doesn't mean you're a better person. We can all think of countries with money but with a bad track record in human rights, like Saudi Arabia. And regarding the HDI, the US is 20th in that, right between South Korea (who are constantly faced with a nuclear threat along the border) and Israel (who are currently involved in stealing another countries' land and constantly persecuting that country's people). So what does developed mean in this context? Because it sure doesn't mean these countries should be able to sleep at night because they have no problems.
But skipping all that, what's weird to me is that this mentality of "we've got a lot of money therefore we have a great country and society and we only make good decisions" is so ingrained in you, that it actually surprises you when your country is surpassed by other countries in some aspects.
And it's nothing to do with you, sorry if I made it seem like I'm attacking you or something, because I'm really not. For lack of a better way to describe this, to someone from the outside it looks like you're a victim of a cult who is slowly starting to recognize that not everything the cult leader has been saying is actually true. I guess what I'm saying is - the American/capitalist propaganda machine does such a good job of pushing the "best country in the world" narrative, that it's really interesting to see the ramifications it has on people's way of thinking about the US.
or a one-way trip from a window on the 10th storey of a building all the way down to the ground.
Not all countries are barbaric. Some just offer a long term stay in federal hospitality.
It’s crazy that anyone would think he can and should be allowed to run for President again. The 14th Amendment is quite clear. And the man incited a violent insurrection to install himself as a dictator during what was a purely symbolic procedure. Trump lost, Biden won. Counting the electoral votes on 1/6 was a formality. There was no actual way for him to remain in office so he betrayed the nation by attempting to destroy democracy as we know it in this country. The only place he belongs in 2024 is ADX Florence.
The question is how to enforce the 14th amendment. This suit looks like a decent attempt at it, that doesn't require Congress to act. (Congress has way too many Republicans right now, who will not enforce the 14th amendment against one of their own.)
The problem is that he did everything he could to use language to make it arguable that he was saying things that incite
i find this very strange. it’s like they’re saying no one really knows what the amendment means because it hasn’t been used in a while. i’m not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn’t really mean much on this. i but i don’t see how it’s that vague (although it is a little vague). i also don’t see why the legal strength of an amendment should depend so much on how often it’s been used.
i’m not saying they’re wrong, i just don’t understand why it’s like that.
It's not obvious what it means to "engage in insurrection" without case law defining what that means. What exactly does "insurrection" mean? What types of actions are required for this law to apply?
It's much more of a gamble.
7 people were convicted already of seditious conspiracy, so either of the conspiracy charges connecting the former president with directing their actions would be pretty strong evidence.
Maybe. That's what the courts will need to decide. And without prior precedent supporting your argument it's not as strong as perhaps you think.
agreed - I think it needs a conviction to occur before anyone can argue this.
Except the conviction won't be for insurrection, but for some other related offense so he'll get away with it on this technicality.
The thing is, it's pretty clear to basically everyone else. We're supposee to have confidence in the people who interpret these things for us, but that's pretty clearly gone too. I'm pretty frightened about where we're headed because at some point people will get fed up that no one is getting real consequences and start handing them out themselves.
Is it? Are you sure?
It's explained in great detail in the federalist papers.
"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped"
The thing that isn't clear to everyone all at once is which people are getting away with heinous things with zero consequences. What is clear is that a certain level of society has no consequences. Eventually one side or the other will get fed up and things will get really bad. Whether they're going after the actual problems is another thing entirely, and the odds are probably better that they'll be going after the wrong people.
Either way, I see the lack of consequences as the ultimate fuse in this powder keg. One of the main functions of government is to systematize and standardize consequences for unacceptable behavior, and we all agree to abide by rules we don't necessarily agree to so that at least it's somewhat consistently applied. In theory. But if government refuses to even give the appearance of doing that, people will take it into their own hands. Human nature has been the way it is way longer than our oldest institutions.
Well, it's clear to everyone who isn't a Trumper, but you need to remember that the law doesn't always follow "it's clear to everyone." Due to various reasons, that law can hinge on technicalities and tests. So while we might agree that Trump engaged in insurrection, proving that he engaged in insurrection in court would be more difficult. Not impossible, mind you, but more difficult. And depending on the judge and evidence, Trump could be found, via a technicality, to have not engaged in insurrection as far as the law goes.
I don't disagree. I think the real problem us that we're supposed to trust the impartiality of the people making those technical legal determinations. It's become obvious that's a total fiction.
This is just the way of the law and the justice system. You've got to prove it.
that's a good point and it helps me understand the problem a bit better. as someone outside the legal system though, it still seems like any sufficiently robust definition of insurrection should cover what he did on january 6th. but i guess having precise definitions is important in a legal setting and that problem still remains.
From what I've heard, the 14th amendment was written in a vague manner because the people passing it didn't know what form a future insurrection would take. Would it be a full fledged Civil War Part 2? Would it be an uprising? Would it be a state government refusing to follow federal law and threatening to arrest anyone trying to enforce it?
Say they defined insurrection as "citizens taking up arms against America," then many of the January 6th folks would be guilty, but would Trump? After all, he didn't technically go down there with a weapon.
The vagueness keeps it open to any form of insurrection, but it also makes it hard to tell what counts as insurrection.
It doesn't say convicted, it says "engaged in" and I believe it prevented former Confederates from taking office. So it seems like there's a pretty big precedent backing it up.
And then there are other amendments like the 2nd Amendment with the puzzling and vague "well-regulated militia" language that never seems to be a problem...
Don't ignore the fact that it was fought in the courts for decades to get where we are now.
Now we have an amendment that hasn't been tested in the courts because no president has been enough of a corrupt, fascist, scumbag to require its use. So, it's going to have to go through the courts.
I only hope someone in every state brings a case.
That's my hope as well. All it takes is for Trump to be removed from the ballot in one or two swing states to have him lose the election.
(Just to be clear to the studio audience, I'm not in favor of "rigging" the system on a technicality so Republicans lose / Democrats win. This is a matter of keeping a criminal defendant insurrectionist and mis-handler of highly classified information out of perhaps the most powerful position in the world.)
For my part, I'm done trying to be civil with the opposition. They don't want to play fair, they don't want democracy to survive, and they want to see the people I care about die.
The Republican party exists today to burn the world down. They have to be destroyed or we're all lost.
Because half the people actively ignore that bit- including many judges.
It's hard to see how this guy, or any other individual, has standing to sue over this. To sue someone you have to be able to prove that you personally were harmed in some way. And broad "this harms the electorate, and I'm part of the electorate" claims usually do not work.
If that is the case, that is absolutely broken.
Except when it comes time to strike down debt relief.
Yeah 😑
Part of it us the lack of caselawwhich is used fairly heavily for arguments in court
Caplan to receive death threats in 3….2….1……
I mean, felons can't even vote.
This is what I've been saying. He's a felon! Over 90 felonies! He's can't run for election.
He hasn't actually been convicted of any yet... technically not a felon until he's sentenced, if I'm not mistaken
Felon upon conviction even before sentencing but otherwise correct.
I'm glad we have some educated people left in this world like you. Conservatives love worshiping law breaking facist pedophiles like Trump and backing Corporate conservative corporations that enable behavior like his. The Home Depot actively encouraged child molestation in the stores in Montana between their child trafficking high managers. I saw a store manager crack a bullwhip at one of his victims in Helena, while the HR and District manager laughed.
So now we'll have a supreme court ruling that what Trump did was not an insurrection. Great.
If it gets to the SCOTUS, and that's a very big if, they can easily make a ruling favorable to Trump without ever touching the question of whether or not he engaged in insurrection. I'm not any kind of expert, but as a long time amateur SCOTUS-watcher I think that's almost certainly what the conservative majority would do. You'd only see the question of insurrection mentioned in the dissenting opinion.
I'd love to see this asshat removed from any chance of getting into office. The GOP will replace him with someone just as awful as far as policies and fascist tendencies, but hopefully they'll be less appealing to the general electorate.
Think: DeSADIST. It was funny to watch how people reacted to his performance in that "debate". He's so unpleasant and smarmy, if he were to win the primary, I think he's flame out so hard in the general.
Trump is a cult of personality, once he goes, the next guy can be Trump In All But Name, and the fanbois won't care
Very true. There are so many try-hards out there - people like Ronnie, Marge, and Qbert, and now Vivek, etc...I doubt that little d's base will fall quite as hard for any of them.
Is this the Florida Man redemption arc?
Seems more like a preemptive strike in an attempt to discredit the claim early in a friendly district.
That actually makes sense. It's plausible that it is strategic preemptive judge shopping. Success would create a protective precedent from the findings of a biased court. My reasoning is simple, if lots of the participants of the riot were charged with insurrection, then it logically follows that the person benefiting the most from the insurrection is likely guilty of it as well. The burden of proof should not be enormous to reach the top tier of that insurrection, because of public statements and suspicious neglect of duty to quietly support the effort. Things like wanting to remove magnetic weapon detectors to invite in armed insurrectionists should be a big clue.
A Florida Man with a functioning brain.
Show me... potato salad!
Wouldn’t he need to be convicted first before this suit has a chance of winning?
Almost certainly, or else the suit could be dismissed on Double Jeopardy grounds. Even then, he would probably just appeal to the Supreme Court and get them to make up some reason to rule in his favor.
This would undoubtedly become the pinnacle of the Roberts Court being on the wrong side of history, though maybe they'd find a way to top that....
The 14th Amendment is consider to be "self-executing" and public election officials can disqualify candidates when presented with a plausible argument.
Well, isn't this a spicy legal showdown? Lawyer Lawrence Caplan is suin' Trump to keep him from the 2024 race? Someone grab the popcorn, we've got a ringside seat to the political drama of the century! I can almost hear the courtroom gasps as they argue about whether Trump's hair should be considered a separate entity running for office. Stay tuned, folks – this legal tango might just give reality TV a run for its money!
Let's say this works and Trump is bad from holding office.
Would Trump consider paying the baton to Don Jr or Eric Trump? Is he capable of giving them that boost?
Then the bigger question is would the Kool aid drinkers accept the different Messiah?
Hah. No. He'd never let someone else shine.
Don Jr, although lauded by the right, also doesn't have what Trump has: an unerring ability to devote himself to the most simplistic and repetitive dogma in the face of all evidence and disagreement.
Part of Trumps success is to unwavering believe something, regardless of how misinformed, even when informed. Examples: "I use spray deodorant it didn't affect the climate that day", "I can change the weather report with a sharpie", "windmills cause cancer", "inject bleach to cure covid", "health insurance only costs $20 a month."
It's part of DeSantis' problem too that he couldn't say something like "blueberry jam makes you a better lover in bed and strawberry jam makes democrats have more abortions" and mean it.
I don't get it, why try to keep him from running? Especially if you're a Democrat, letting Trump run would split the Republican vote and almost guarantee a Democratic victory.
A lot of people that a similar thing in 2016.
Keeping him from running accomplishes about the same thing. The cultists will refuse to accept any other Republican nominee, and will refuse to vote, calling it "rigged."
Because I don't think of politics as winning. My politics wins when the state feels comfortable applying rules to the elite.
Traitors to your country shouldn't get the opportunity to run
Dude is a lawyer from Florida, so he's likely conservative and doesn't want Trump to lose the election for the Republicans.
How would it split the vote? It's a two party system.
There are still 3rd parties in the US, a prime example in US politics that would equate to this would be the Election of 1912, where President Wilson won against the incumbent Republican, President Taft. The only reason Wilson won was because Roosevelt ran as a Republican adjacent candidate under the "Bull Moose" party, which effectively split the Republican vote and prevented Taft from getting all of the Republican vote.
If Trump runs again, it is likely he will be running as an independent candidate, which will split the Republican vote and allow the Democrats a sure win.
Why would he run as an independent when he's the front runner for the GOP
The powers that be (the old republicans) do not like him, they wouldn't allow him to be the GOP candidate even if he succeeded.
They failed to stop him in 2016 and 2020, so I see no reason to think they'll succeed in stopping him this time.
Out of curiosity, where are you getting this idea? Are there any reputable experts you can point to? I sure haven't seen anyone arguing anything like this apart from you.
Not trying to be a dick, just asking.
This might be a good place to start.
Florida men doing their thingyea that should do it
I never saw this amount of energy to disqualify someone of a presidential election. (What is in this case good) It shows issues in the state itself and how the laws are made. It's already systemic.
Well, Trump only stands accused of 91 felonies, it's not like he attempted a coup d'état or som... Oh, wait...
It's not wagner-style at least
I've never seen this amount of energy to run in the presidential election from an unqualified con-man. And I don't disagree with you on this showing issues in the state itself, but I suspect we may have different ideas on what those issues are.
Unfortunately our system was not designed in the anticipation of someone like Trump together with the complete siloing of information ecosystems made possible by modern technology.
What we're seeing is new in kind because both Trump and our information ecosystems are new in kind.
The founders also lived in a much more honor-based society wherein dueling was still very much a thing. Someone like Trump, a notorious liar and loud-mouthed braggart would have almost certainly been run through with a small-sword or shot while dueling. If he declined to accept a challenge to a duel, he would have been ostracized from polite society and effectively cut off from public office.
In other words, they expected that things like honor and decorum and the risk of being killed in a duel would provide for consequences not enumerated in the Constitution.
And they were right for over 200 years, then along came Trump and it turned out that such "customs and norms" were not enough.
We now see our old and very decrepit system --that was deliberately designed to be almost impossible to update -- struggling with that fact.
The groups that are calling for Trump to be disqualified are acting like a lynch mob. Think about the end result and how it could be used by nefarious future leaders who want to snuff out their competitors.
The very premise of "blocking Trump from running" is saying let's give a judge - perhaps only a single judge (!) - authority to tell voters who they can and cannot vote for.
I'll be the first to say that Trump should be in jail if he's convicted for his crimes. But I don't want any court to take away my right to put any name I want on that bllot, for any reason.
There are rules about who can and can't run. It's not an open ballot.
These are black and white rules, not easily subject to debate. If you qualify, you qualify.
And if you don't, you don't. That's precisely the point.
14th amendment, section 3. That's not black and white.
Yes that's what most of the discussion revolves around, and the idea of who defines what an insurrection is and who's guilty, because the amendments don't define this. Some dictionary definitions seem to include minor behavior as mundane as running a protest or making a public statement of disagreement with the current government, which would likely vacuum up any person you'd ever want to vote for.
In the comment you replied to, I was thinking about these constitutional requirements:
-Be a natural-born citizen of the United States -Be at least 35 years old -Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years
Which I think we can agree are either true or false for Amy given candidate and difficult to argue factually. That isn't true, however, of the 14th amendment concept, which is, in my argument, better left to the voters to decide rather than a small number of judges and lawyers.
I don't think it's good to resort to the election to determine a complex legal ruling. It wouldn't simply be ruling him eligible it not as the case would be in court. It would just make him president if enough people want him. There are many reasons that people pick who they vote for. I would prefer a ruling on the 14th amendment issue to be based only in that and made by people who understand constitutional law.
I understand your reservations about leaving that jn the hands of the judiciary, but for that type of thing I don't think just letting the election decide is the appropriate course of action.
You can put whatever you want on your ballot. However, states have rules about which names they will print on the ballots as suggested potential votes. Having the legal process keep an enemy of the state off of a bunch of states’ ballots is a precedent I am totally cool with. Though I get what you’re saying because of course republicans will try to get the Democrat nominee disqualified if they think it’s at all possible.
It will be interesting to see how many write-ins he gets if he’s not on the ballot in various states. Or hell, even if he’s not the nominee in the first place.
He led an insurrection. It's in the constitution that you can't run for office if you lead an insurrection.
Yes, he probably did, and that alone disqualies him from getting my vote and hopefully the majority too.
But consider that the founding fathers were insurrectionists. Consider that many figures in world history object to the ruling party's ideas and are labeled insurrectionists because of it. It's a tool of oppressors.
In fact, some might label any protestor who does a sit in or some other rebellious or obnoxious activity as insurrection. One of the dictionary definitions of insurrection is "The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government." The constitution of the US doesn't offer a definition.
In many countries, politicians are suppressed by accusations of insurrection solely because they oppose whoever is in power at the time.
My argument is not that Trump is worthy of the job (he's not), rather that I want this kind of decision in the hands of the voters, not a handful of lawyers and judges.
This is wonderful rhetoric and I'm glad you said it.
Let the people decide his fate through a free and fair election
Is it your opinion that nobody should ever be disqualified from running for any elected office, for any reason?
Correct. The will of the people is integral to our democracy.
Rule of law and peaceful transition of power are also pretty important to your democracy.
Do you support suspending the constitution to allow someone disqualified from election to take office?
Or do you just support amending the constitution?
If someone is constitutionally disqualified then they obviously can't run for office. Trump has not been charged with insurrection or rebellion as per the 14th Amendment so he can still run.
What is the process for establishing if someone is barred from office by the 14th amendment?
Would they not have to be convicted of insurrection or rebellion?
Are those specific felonies?
Hey not to harrass you or anything, but you may find this comment chain informative:
https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/400592/-/comment/1969045
Cheers from America's hat.
Felons aren't allowed to vote bootlicker.
I'm sorry to hear you can't vote, however, my point stands. If you don't like democracy you shouldn't live in a democratic nation.
Why are Americans so obsessed with disqualifying Trump? If you don't like him then don't vote him, simple
Because we didn't vote for him and he's still made his way into office. If you want inaction you should teach that lesson to yourself and stop posting
It's not that simple, thanks to the Electoral College. If electing a president was based on popular vote, the last several Republican presidents wouldn't have been elected.
But thanks to how the Electoral College works, getting elected is based more on strategically winning specific states. Texas, for example, has several deep blue cities with some of the largest populations in the country. Yet, all 50-something electoral votes go to Republicans, because Republicans win the popular vote in the state. The will of those millions of people is discarded and flipped due to the other areas voting differently.
Felons aren't allowed to vote. Bootlicker.