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Source: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
Legal questions have continued to rise over Democrats impeachment push of former President Donald Trump. The main concern is that a president cannot be impeached once he or she leaves office. Democrats are focused on impeachment because it would bar Trump from running for office ever again. They are now, however, looking at another way of achieving that goal: through the 14th Amendment.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment allows Congress to limit an elected official from being considered for office if they have taken part in insurrection or rebellion. Democrats have continually said President Trump encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, something they consider an act of insurrection. At least that s what they claim in their article of impeachment.
To Timothy Walberg, U.S. Congressman: A number of Michigan 7th District voters find your actions reprehensible because:Service Sabotage: Intentional failure to address real problemsCOVID19: Attendance at rallies where participants defy governor and state health rules of mandatory face masks, limited participants and social distancing.Voter fraud: 50 States verified election and 60 federal, state judges, legislators, along with Christopher Krebs, U.S. top election official, found "no evidence of
On January 20, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Though the tradition of the transfer of power provided many with hope on Wednesday, the inauguration happened under the shadow of a violent insurrection.
Just two weeks before, thousands of Americans, in the shape of a largely white mob, stormed the very building where Biden took his presidential oath. The
mob, under the spell of fabrications about the presidential election being stolen especially in states with high Black populations sought to “take back the country” through violence. The scene, just one day after Democrats secured control of Congress through the election of a Black senator and a Jewish senator in Georgia, mirrored coup attempts from the Reconstruction era.
People must be held accountable
Sedition: “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state.”
Terrorism: “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.”
The Trump “rally” was clearly sedition, and the subsequent riot was clearly terrorism. Those who spoke at the rally are clearly guilty of sedition.
The entire rally was based on the lie that the election was stolen from Trump. No one has presented any evidence that there was voter fraud of any magnitude during the 2020 election. If there had been enough fraud to change the outcome of the election there would be evidence of that. There is none.
Disqualifying Insurrectionists and Rebels: A How-To Guide
The U.S. Capitol viewed through a security perimeter after the Jan. 6 riot. (Flickr/Victoria Pickering, https://flic.kr/p/2krWqEA; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)
In recent days, severalscholarsandlawmakers have suggested that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment might be used to bar Donald Trump and some of his allies from ever holding federal or state office again. The Section 3 route is a plausible alternative, or potentially a supplement, to the more traditional route for sanctioning state criminals: impeachment. But a number of unresolved questions remain regarding Section 3’s scope as well as the process by which the lifetime ban can be invoked. Here, I flag the most important questions, answer some of them, and offer tentative guidance to lawyers and lawmakers seeking to apply Section 3 to individuals who participated in or abetted the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.