Donald Trump Disputes 14th Amendment Plaintiff’s Standing in Ariz. Case – A lawyer for former President Donald Trump disputes anti-Trump 14th Amendment ballot crusader John Anthony Castro’s claim that he has standing to bring his federal lawsuit in Arizona. Castro, who registered as a presidential candidate to challenge Trump, claims that his ability to fundraise is hampered by the former president’s place on the ballot.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of a similar case he brought in Florida last summer earlier this month
Castro has claimed that Trump’s candidacy would harm his ability to fundraise; however, a Federal Election Commission report shows that Castro’s campaign has been self-funded to the tune of $20 million. He has not received other donations.
His FEC filing shows he has not done any other fundraising.
Federal Judge Ruled Last Month Castro Could Not Prove Case
Federal District Judge Douglas Rayes ruled last month that, “Mr. Castro has proffered no evidence that, were the Court to issue a TRO now, Mr. Trump would not receive contributions or support at current levels, or that Mr. Castro would receive more contributions or support than he is receiving now.”
Rayes continued, “The upshot is that Mr. Castro has not carried his heavy burden of showing that the Court must take immediate action—without hearing from the adverse parties—in order to avoid irreparable injury before the Court can resolve his preliminary injunction motion.”
Trump Attorney: Castro Lacks Standing
Trump attorney Tim La Sota contends the Texas tax attorney has no standing to sue because he cannot prove he would be damaged or harmed in any way by Trump’s place on the ballot.
La Sota also noted that the president is immune from the 14th Amendment’s clause barring people who engaged in insurrections from running for office or from holding office. He argued that the amendment applies to those who “previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States.’’ The president is not among them.
“It establishes that the drafters of the 14th Amendment did not understand the president to be an officer of the United States,’’ he said.
Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president is the only officer of the federal government who can decide if an insurrection is underway. This was the case in April 1861 when Abraham Lincoln called for 70,000 volunteers to crush the Confederacy. George H.W. Bush was the last president to invoke the act in 1992 when he opted to send in the U.S. Marines from Camp Pendelton to restore order following the L.A. riots.
It would have been Trump’s call to have decided that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an insurrection. Trump talked about invoking the law in response to the self-described “George Floyd Uprising”; however, he was talked out of it by his advisers.
The hyperbole surrounding the Capitol riot was mocked by Republicans when they described this past week’s sit-in by a pro-Palestinian group in one of the Capitol Hill office buildings as an “insurrection.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting. He writes opinion pieces for this publication.
