Constitution Disqualifies Trump From Holding Office, Conservative Former Judge Says
Former president barred due to role in January 6 insurrection, one-time federal jurist asserts
The US Constitution bars Donald Trump from ever again holding elected office due to his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his actions during the insurrection on January 6, 2021.
That's according to a highly conservative federal judge, who nonetheless has emerged in recent years as a Trump critic and a defender of American democracy.
Trump has now been criminally indicted twice — once in federal court and again in Fulton County Ga — for efforts to interfere with the result from the 2020 election.
The former president is making his third run for the White House and is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
However, a provision of the Constitution prevents Trump from ever again holding office, according to J Michael Luttig, a former Republican and one-time federal judge.
“The disqualification provision of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and, therefore, the imposition of that qualification for the presidency is stated in perhaps the clearest language possible in the Constitution and it is unmistakably applicable to the former president and his role in activities on January 6,” Luttig, who was cited by name by then-Vice President Mike Pence when he declared he had no authority to interfere in Democrat Joe Biden's certification as president by Congress. “So the question is not whether the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to the former president, it unquestionably does.”
Section 3 finds that no one should be allowed to hold office in the United States who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“The questions that the Supreme Court must decide eventually are rather more technical constitutional questions — for instance, whether the clause is self-executing and which particular officials are in a position to challenge the qualification of the former president,” Luttig said. “But in terms of the process, the process is quite clear. I believe to a certainty that there will be secretaries of state in several of the states who will decline to place the former president on the ballot, arguing that he is unqualified by virtue of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“Whether that official or those officials qualify the president, former president, or they disqualify him, that decision will be immediately challenged in state or federal court by a person with standing to challenge it,” he added. “It would certainly include the former president. And from that moment on, this will be a matter destined for the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme Court will be obliged to decide this monumentally important case before the 2024 election.”
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