WILL TRUMP BE DISQUALIFIED FROM RUNNING IN 2024?

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

On August 19, University of Chicago Law Professor William Baude and University of St. Thomas Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, both members of the right-wing Federalist Society, published a paper, to the effect that, “based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, if the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. Trump is no longer eligible to (run for) the office of the Presidency”.

At that time, this interpretation of the 14th Amendment was regarded by the media and the legal community as mere conjecture, with no real teeth to prevent Trump’s presidential candidacy.However, since then, there has been increasing momentum amongst the legal community, confirming the constitutional argument that Trump could be disbarred from the presidency.

The latest opinion came from Lawrence Tribe, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, Founder of the American Constitution Society and deemed one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Constitutional Law.

Professor Tribe said on CNN’s State of the Union last Sunday: “The people who wrote the 14th Amendment were not fools. They realized that if those people who tried to overturn the country, who tried to get rid of our peaceful transitions of power are again put in power, that would be end of the nation, the end of democracy”.

Michael J. Luttig, one of the country’s best known conservative jurists and key adviser to former Vice-President Pence said, in an interview with the Washington Post, “250 years ago, we had a revolution against the king, created a new nation and a new Constitution to govern the nation…. The former president attempted to overturn an election that he had lost fair and square, incited the attack on January 6 in order to prevent the Joint Session (of Congress} from counting the electoral votes to determine the presidency of the United States of America”…. If he runs again, “Donald Trump, in the end, will be allowed to make a mockery out of the Constitution of the United States and the Rule of Law”.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is a self-executing provision of the US Constitution, a provision that can be enforced without the aid of a legislative enactment, like a conviction.

“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the US Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again”, wrote Tribe and Luttig.

The final ruling will probably be determined by the Supreme Court, which gives Trump a 6/3 advantage. However, if the Justices rule not on Party lines but on a strict interpretation of the Constitution and their conscience, as they did on the 2020 election disputes, there is every chance that the majority of the Court will uphold the provisions of the 14th Amendment and rule that Trump is not qualified to run for or hold any public office in the United States in the future.

A lawsuit has already been filed by Noah Bookbinder, President of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in Colorado which states: “Having disqualified himself from public office by violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Donald Trump must be removed from the (Colorado State) ballot. January 6 was an unprecedented attack, exactly the kind of event, against which the framers of the 14th Amendment built such protections. You don’t break the glass unless there’s an emergency”.

With 13 months and four criminal trials to go before the November 2024 election, there will surely be many more lawsuits, filed by secretaries of state of Red and Blue states, to disqualify Trump from running.

Trump himself is currently providing the best evidence for his own disqualification with his post-arrest rantings, at TV interviews and campaign rallies. These may prove to be more effective than any legal interpretation of a constitutional amendment.

Trump is every prosecutor’s dream defendant, and every defense lawyer’s nightmare. He contradicts himself and admits to the many charges against him almost every time he opens his mouth at campaign rallies and interviews.

Last week, in an address at a Washington DC Pray Vote Stand summit, Trump stated that Joe Biden was “cognitively impaired” and would “lead the country into World War II if re-elected”. World War II ended in 1945. In the same speech, Trump said that he was “ahead of Obama in the 2024 election polls”, mixing up Presidents Obama and Biden. He also said that Obama was his opponent in 2016, “With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won”. Hillary Clinton was his opponent in 2016.

President Biden may be 80 years old, but compared to the mental and moral wasteland that is the 77 year-old Trump, he’s an intellectual giant, who gave a stirring oration at the United Nations General Assembly last week.

At an exclusive interview with Kristen Welker, aired on NBC Meet the Press on Sunday, September 17, Trump contradicted both himself and the positions taken by defense lawyers on numerous occasions. A few extracts:

He declined to answer the question posed by Ms. Welker on how he spent the afternoon of the insurrection on January 6, 2021. “I am not going to tell you. I’ll tell people later at an appropriate time”. Trump’s aides have already confirmed, under oath, that he had sequestered himself in a room off the Oval Office to watch the violence on TV. It took him 187 minutes to order the insurrectionists to stop the violence and to go home.

About the alleged fraudulent 2020 election, Trump said that “It was my decision, that the 2020 election was rigged, there was no question about it”. A statement in direct contradiction of his defense lawyers’ mendacious argument that he was merely going by the advice of his White House counsel, who convinced him that the election had been rigged.

In truth, his own Attorney General, William Barr, and many White House aides have already given evidence on oath that they had told Trump that there was no evidence of election fraud.

When asked about the mishandling of government top-secret documents stored at unsecured Mar a Lago locations, Trump said, “They were my documents. I could have fought them. I didn’t have to give them back” (to the National Archives). A total legal delusion. Those documents were the property of the US government.

When asked if he would testify to this effect, he said, “Sure, I’m going to – I’ll testify”. Trump’s defense lawyers will never let him get a mile near the witness box. He covers up one lie with another, he’ll be found guilty of perjury within minutes.

The impeachment of President Biden, proposed recently by Republican Speaker McCarthy, was based on minor charges against his son, Hunter. McCarthy also talked vaguely about “other high crimes” of the “Biden Crime Family” without a vestige of facts or evidence. He denies this is retaliation, the classic quid quo pro – “They did it to us, we do it to them”.

The Republican Congress recently accused the Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice of showing a double standard in the treatment of the respective crimes of Hunter Biden and Donald Trump. Sure, there was a double standard. The crimes under investigation of Hunter Biden, private citizen, were three gun-related offences. The crimes of former President Trump, indicted, arrested and released on conditional bail, are espionage, sedition, obstruction of justice, sexual assaults and financial fraud. A ridiculous comparison. Apples and oranges, many, many rotten oranges.

Trump claimed that the Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi was somehow responsible for the January 6 insurrection. This statement is preposterous, even by Trump standards. Pelosi was one of the two main targets (the first being Vice-President Pence) of the insurrectionists. She did not have the authority to call for immediate Capitol Police and National Guard reinforcements to quell the violence. Only Trump did. And he didn’t, for 187 minutes, in spite of desperate calls from Vice-President Pence, Speaker Pelosi and Republican Minority House Leader McCarthy.

When asked about abortion rights, Trump said the Republican positions were “terrible”, though he held these same positions during his presidency. In fact, he once announced at a rally that Democrats allowed abortion after childbirth, a typically moronic statement, as such an act ceases to be abortion. Killing an infant is murder.

He now seeks to portray himself as a “deal maker”, making vague and confused comments on the “number of weeks after which he would ban abortion”, and whether it’s a decision that should be “left to the state or the federal government”. He is softening his stance on abortion because he has realized it’s going to be a major factor in the 2024 election.

Abortion is a decision to be made by the pregnant woman (or the parents, where relevant, of a pregnant minor) and her doctor. It is certainly not a decision for old white geezers, who barely know what an uterus is, who demand Victorian sexual morals of others, while being lecherously liberal of their own.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is seeking an order to prevent Trump from making inflammatory, intimidating and threatening remarks against witnesses, prosecutors and judges. “Through his statements, the defendant threatens to undermine the integrity of these proceedings and prejudice the jury pool”.

Trump has shown no signs of toning down his comments, even though his arrest and release were on conditional bail. He keeps repeating his lies that “the FBI and Justice Department are weaponized”, that “President Biden is crooked” and Special Counsel Smith is “deranged”. He even claimed that Judge Chutkan was a Trump hater, and insists that she recuse herself.

“They Leak, Lie & Sue, and they won’t allow me to SPEAK”, Trump wrote on his social media. Special Counsel “Smith wants to take away my rights to speak freely and openly under the First Amendment”. His lawyers should advise him that specific threats, especially those with an intent of causing bodily harm and endangering lives, are not protected by the First Amendment.

Trump’s desperate defense strategy is obvious. Left without any restraints, he will order his thugs (the process has already begun) to send death threats to witnesses, prosecutors and their families. He will poison the jury pools, so that a unanimous verdict may not be possible. The judge may have to call a mistrial, which he will trumpet to his base as proof of his innocence, a triumph.

Judge Chutkan, the presiding judge over the case against Trump on the alleged felony of sedition in the January 6 insurrection, had imposed certain conditions on Trump on his release on bail. Trump has already flouted these conditions.

Special Counsel Smith has now filed a request for a “narrowly tailored gag order” on Trump, limiting how he would be able to publicly comment on any of the cases against him. However, knowing Trump and the certainty that he will violate such a gag order, Judge Chutkan may well have to reconsider more Draconian measures to restrain Trump from interfering in the judicial process in the future, up to and including imprisonment.