Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia on Sunday said that he believes a strong legal argument can be made to use the 14th Amendment to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024, citing Trump’s actions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Shortly after Jan. 6, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection amid his push to overturn his election loss, with 10 Republicans and all Democrats voting to impeach him.
He denied any wrongdoing, and while seven members of his own party joined Democrats to support his conviction, he was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.
Great, again, what’s to stop a Republican in a red state from indicting someone who was, for example, at a Black Lives Matter protest for insurrection because they want to bar them from office? Because that is the precedent being set if you don’t wait for a verdict.
This is 100% my take as well. Conviction is how the government proves a person did something. Absent that, all you have are allegations, and we really don’t want to open up the possibility of disqualifying people because of unproven allegations of sedition.
What about the “truths” he truthed on his shitty twitter knockoff about needing to terminate the constitution?
This is still just an allegation until these posts have been presented in court and he has been convicted. You really don’t want to set a precedent ignoring presumption of innocent.
I seem to recall we’ve been over this before.
Elections are handled in the states. The people who are responsible, in a given state, to determine whether someone is qualified to hold office are the ones who make that determination - whether the disqualification comes from Article II of the US Constitution (where the criteria for POTUS qualification are described) or from the 14th Amendment to the same US Constitution.
If someone feels they have been wrongly disqualified - regardless of why they were disqualified - have recourse to seek relief from that condition through state courts (and possibly federal courts, since it’s in the area of constitutional law, but I have other thoughts on that). Or, in the case of 14A S3, for each house of the US Congress to remove that disability each by a two-thirds vote.
In your example, if someone becomes disqualified from the ballot for being at a BLM protest, based on 14A S3, they would seek relief in one of those ways. And I would bet that they would be immediately successful, because BLM protests were not attempting to subvert the federal government, or interfere with the legal operation of federal government official business.
Good thing conservatives don’t control those or anything…
So what’s your answer then? Just not enforce any laws at all because Republicans might do it in bad faith? They’re gonna act in bad faith no matter what.
The answer has been said in this thread already: conviction rather than allegation.
There is a difference between “following the law” and “achieving the political outcome you desire,” and that difference is kind of what got us where we are in the first place.
Because insurrection has a definition and one meets that definition and the other doesn’t.
or not even a BLM protest. It could be the most peaceful protest in the world. hell, they’re already retaliating with calls for impeaching biden, and stuff.
(I’m reminded of some amazon worker protests that showed up to an office building near my work. they did the rant. they did the chant. they had some fun confetti things. When they were done, the swept up and left. gotta respect that, lol.)
Because a protest is not an insurrection. It has a definition.
That can be clearly established and ruled in by a judge to set precedent if need be.
Remind me who appointed a ton of judges a few years ago and got a conservative SCOTUS majority.