Two prominent Democrats have endorsed the notion, as reported by Axios, that former President Donald Trump may be rendered ineligible for a potential 2024 election bid through the provisions of the 14th Amendment.
Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff of California and Tim Kaine of Virginia have expressed support for the idea that Trump could be prevented from appearing on the 2024 ballot by invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which stipulates that individuals who have “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from holding elected office.
Additionally, Free Speech For People, a Democratic-affiliated organization, recently dispatched letters to the secretaries of state in pivotal 2024 states, contending that Trump should be excluded from the electoral roster. Schiff, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” on Sunday, asserted that this disqualification “perfectly aligns with Donald Trump’s actions.”
“If you engage in acts of insurrection or rebellion against the government, or you give aid and comfort to those who do, you are disqualified from running,” Schiff said.
“It doesn’t require that you be convicted of insurrection. It just requires that you have engaged in these acts.” Kaine told ABC News there is “a powerful argument to be made” for disqualification. “In my view, the attack on the Capitol that day was designed for particular purpose at a particular moment, and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the Constitution,” he said, noting that “it’s probably going to get resolved in the courts.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called the idea of disqualifying Trump under the 14th Amendment “the single most dangerous constitutional theory I have seen pop up in decades” during a Fox News segment on Aug. 22. Hans von Spakovsky, Election Law Reform Initiative manager and senior legal fellow for The Heritage Foundation, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Section 3 of the amendment “is no longer in effect because Congress passed two amnesty acts in 1872 and 1898 as it is allowed to do under that Section to remove the disabilities imposed by Section 3.”
“Moreover, Donald Trump has never been convicted of ‘insurrection or rebellion’ by any court and not by Congress either in the impeachment proceedings that were attempted against him,” Spakovsky said. “These attempts to disqualify him from the ballot are unconstitutional.”
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson previously told the DCNF that allowing state officials to determine what constitutes insurrection on their own would “wreak havoc on our constitutional presidential electoral system.”
