In our earlier post we specifically addressed Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is one of the three Civil War Amendments passed immediately following the Civil war. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been raised recently as a possible way to prevent Donald Trump from running for President again and we examined the arguments for and against this application of the 14th Amendment. We urge you to read our previous post as the necessary background to the current discussion.
Colorado Case
Some Democrat Secretaries of State are actively trying to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 in their States and some well funded Democrat groups have filed lawsuits in some States. Lawsuits in Colorado and Minnesota have trials that begin this week.
The trial for the Colorado lawsuit began on Monday. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters by the liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. As reported by NPR,1 the lawsuit alleges that
“Four years after taking an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution as President of the United States … Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, leading to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol to stop the lawful transfer of power to his successor.
“By instigating this unprecedented assault on the American constitutional order, Trump violated his oath and disqualified himself under the Fourteenth Amendment from holding public office, including the Office of the President.”
Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to force Judge Sarah B. Wallace to recuse herself based on a donation she made in late 2022 to the Colorado Turnout Project, a group whose website says it was formed to "prevent violent insurrections" such as the Jan. 6 attack.2 Judge Wallace denied the motion and declined to recuse herself.
"This is a legal Hail Mary by the Democrats," said Mike Davis, an attorney who appeared with representatives of the Trump campaign outside court before the trial began. "This case is going to fail."3
Minnesota case
In the Minnesota case, it is the Democrat Secretary of State, Steve Simon, who is the plaintiff. The left of center group Free Speech for People filed the lawsuit after Simon refused multiple requests from the group to remove Trump from the ballot.
As reported by NBC News,4 Simon said
"The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State does not have legal authority to investigate a candidate’s eligibility for office. In the case of presidential candidates, the major political parties will submit names of candidates to our office for the Presidential Nomination Primary by January 2, 2024. Those submissions will appear on the ballot for the March 5, 2024 contest unless a court says otherwise."
Ron Fein, the legal director at Free Speech for People, said that the group filed the lawsuit because they believe that the Secretary of State does have legal authority to keep Trump off the ballot in Minnesota. Fein said that the group plans to file similar lawsuits in multiple states, as well as continuing to encourage Secretaries of State to keep Trump off the ballot on their own initiative.
Trump has called the efforts in Colorado and Minnesota “nonsense” and “election interference.”
One thing that is clear is that the US Supreme Court will need to rule on this issue to establish a nationwide standard and with the Presidential Primary season starting in only 10 weeks (the Iowa Caucuses), it will hopefully be sooner rather than later.
Insurrection?
As discussed at length in our previous Section 3 post, one of the most important issues is whether or not there actually was an insurrection on January 6, 2021. We recall that as the events of January 6 were still unfolding that all of the Leftstream media were already using the archaic label “insurrection“ to describe what was happening.
Contrast this with the 2020 “Summer of Love,” riots in cities across America when there were 15 times more injured police officers, 23 times as many arrests and estimated damages 1300 times more than January 6.5 The “mostly peaceful” riots in the Summer of Love were the work of BLM and Antifa, so they haven’t gotten the same negative attention by the Leftstream media and the Biden DOJ.
The recent pro-Palestinian protest that took over the Capitol dome and disrupted Congress, albeit in this case with less violence than the “Summer of Love.” These pro-Palestinian groups are also on the Left so they likewise haven’t gotten the same negative attention by the Leftstream media and the Biden DOJ as January 6 did.6
Of course, Trumps opponents decisively state that there was an insurrection in their lawsuits while Trump’s defenders state there was not. It will be up to the Courts to determine, either in the absence of all the facts or after extensive review of not yet released video and other evidence, whether or not an insurrection occurred on January 6 in order to render a ruling on whether or not Section 3 can be applied to Trump.
The “Big Lie” or Election Fraud?
In addition to whether or not there was an insurrection on January 6 is the issue of whether or not the 2020 Presidential election was “the most secure in American history” or “so fraught with fraud” that the results must be examined.
If you follow Leftstream media you will continually hear that President Trump is spreading the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen. But if there were significant irregularities that should be examined, then there is no lie in questioning the election process and calling for audits. This is not an issue in the Section 3 arguments but it is the main issue in the Georgia charges against Trump and others.
Election integrity is too exhaustive an issue for us to examine in this post. Many alternative news sources have already presented much evidence over the past three years and that information is readily available to anyone who is willing to take the time to review it.
We bring it up here only to note that while the Section 3 issue is existential in terms of Trump being on the ballot, the integrity of the 2020 election and the entire election process is also of vital importance to the future of free and fair elections in the United States. We must not lose focus on either issue in the current election cycle.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/arguments-in-lawsuit-using-insurrection-clause-to-knock-trump-off-presidential-ballots-begins
As reported by MSN News. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cases-in-colorado-minnesota-seek-to-stop-trump-from-becoming-president-again/ar-AA1j8nAn
ibid
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/lawsuit-filed-minnesota-boot-former-president-donald-trump-2024-ballot-rcna104634