Donald J. Trump is not going to be the president. The Left and their allies in the Administrative State have ensured that he can never win.
The saddest part in this affair is that they didn’t even have to make anything up about Trump’s actions, as they had to do in the Russia collusion investigation that ultimately was proven to be predicated on false premises.
Trump’s enemies are using the former president’s actions and words decisively against him. Yet again, the country is barreling toward a constitutional crisis over whether Trump should—or even can—hold power again.
You see, the charges that former President Trump conspired to overthrow a lawful election in 2020 is what the Democrats are using as a cudgel to stymie Trump’s reelection campaign. According to those who currently run our government, the former president attempted to prevent the legal handover of power after he lost the 2020 Presidential Election to Joe Biden.
There are two cases in which Trump is facing serious charges related to those purported insurrectionist activities.
First, Trump has been indicted in a Georgia state grand jury investigation into his alleged attempts to pressure Georgia state election officials to “find” him 11,780 more votes while they were counting votes in 2020.
Second, the former president has been indicted by a federal grand jury investigating claims that Trump attempted to lead an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
He Won’t Be Able to Run Again: That’s the Plan to Stop Donald Trump
Should Donald Trump be found guilty in either of these cases (I suspect he will be found guilty in at least one of these cases), not only will the forty-fifth president face serious jail time, but he will be disqualified from running for office under Article III of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The amendment in question was passed after the Civil War and was designed to prevent former Confederates from taking power again, out of fear that they might reignite the Civil War.
Of course, as a matter of history, we know that many former Confederates did return to power in the South following the end of the Civil War, so long as they swore allegiance to the United States and promised to respect the rights of the recently freed slaves.
Naturally, once the former Confederates got into power, they did as they pleased, notably because the north was disinterested in holding the South’s feet to the political and legal fires because the northerners had their own concerns closer to their homes.
Nevertheless, the Fourteenth Amendment’s so-called “insurrection clause,” which is found in Article III of the amendment makes it clear that anyone “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after those individuals took an oath of office to defend the US Constitution will be disqualified from ever being able to hold public office, at any level of government, again. The limits of this legal theory have already been tested in New Mexico, where a former state senator, Cuoy Griffin, was prevented from retaining his office because he was convicted of trespassing at the Capitol Building during the January 6 riot, which he had participated in.
Griffin attempted to appeal the ruling against him to the New Mexico Supreme Court and the state supreme court denied Griffin’s appeal. Thus, a precedent has been established. Only the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) could possibly overturn such a ruling at this point and the conservative SCOTUS does not appear interested in hearing such a case.
Thus, when Trump is found guilty in one (or both) of his cases related to the alleged insurrection, the Democrats will have all the ammunition they need to disqualify former President Trump from appearing on the ballot or holding office.
Some Points of Disagreement
Of course, not all legal scholars agree with this interpretation. The problem is that the insurrection clause argument was crafted not by Left-wing attorneys, but by two prominent conservative lawyers who belong to the prestigious Federalist Society.
Liberals have taken up their interpretation of the insurrection clause and built upon it, by saying that it is “self-executing”, meaning the moment that Trump is convicted in either of those two cases, Trump is automatically disqualified from running for reelection.
Conservative legal scholars, like Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell told Politico that the argument underlying the insurrection clause, when applied to former President Trump, contained language that was “too loose” and that terms like “insurrection [and] rebellion [should only] apply to the most serious of uprisings against the government.”
McConnell is completely correct. As I have written in these pages, January 6 was awful and the John Eastman legal theory undergirding Trump’s lawful challenges to the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election was far-fetched, but none of it amounted to either an insurrection or rebellion—certainly not on the level of what befell the United States in 1861!
Yet, since January 6, the Democrats and several key Republicans have consistently claimed that the riots on that awful day were akin to another civil war. They have insisted that the pressure campaign that surrogates of former President Trump mounted against then-Vice-President Mike Pence on January 6, the day Pence was meant to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, was tantamount to a coup.
The Deck is Stacked Against Trump on January 6
More legal precedents have been established as it relates to January 6, in the form of all the rioters who have been jailed based on charges related to insurrection. In July 2022, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National pollfound that 50 percent of all Americans classified the January 6 riots as an “insurrection and a threat to our democracy.”
In that poll 52 percent of those who identify as independents agreed that January 6 was an insurrection and a threat to our democracy. Interestingly, though, 61 percent of those polled do not believe that former President Trump should be charged with a crime, irrespective of whether January 6 was an insurrection or simply a riot.
The Administrative State is Going to Get Its Way
Nevertheless, the powers that be in Washington, D.C., are moving ahead at breakneck speed to kneecap Trump’s candidacy as president in 2024 by using their interpretation of the insurrection clause against the forty-fifth president.
At every turn, the Administrative State has gotten its way. The Democrats have effectively convinced at least half of the population that January 6 was a threat to democracy.
If Trump is found guilty in either the federal grand jury investigation into his role on January 6 or the Georgia state grand jury investigation into Trump’s alleged attempt to unduly influence the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election in the Peach State, the Administrative State is going to get Trump disqualified from holding office.
If they can’t get it done outright, they’ll sue to make sure Trump doesn’t appear on the ballots of multiple states. At the very least, it’s the makings of a major constitutional crisis that could yet again tear the fabric of our democratic order apart.
Nominating Trump to win the 2024 Election is not necessary, though. The Republicans have a viable nominee in Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, he can achieve the Trump policies without the baggage of Donald Trump.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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