Can it possibly be true that Donald J. Trump’s conduct on 1/6 — his provoking the assault on our government and his giving “aid and comfort” to those who mounted the attack — has disqualified him from seeking the presidency?
That is the view of two highly esteemed legal experts. One of them is a conservative, the other is a liberal. They are, respectively, former U.S. District Judge Michael Luttig and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
The have written an op-ed in which they declare that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means that Trump is hereby disqualified from seeking the presidency. Period … full stop!
Luttig said that when the amendment was ratified in 1868 — shortly after the Civil War — it made no qualifier to declaring someone ineligible if they knowingly engaged in an insurrection or rebellion. The amendment’s intent was to prevent another war within the United States.
Indeed, at least two congressional leaders — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — are on record declaring that Trump was responsible for the attack on the government that sought to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Oh, did I mention that Trump lost that election to Joe Biden?
They have been joined, interestingly, by a host of conservative legal scholars who contend that Trump, indeed, should be barred from the presidential ballot because of what he said that day on the Ellipse. He challenged the crowd to take control of the electoral process and stop the certification of what he contends to this day as a “stolen” election.
Two conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, wrote in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, according to CBS News:
In writing about Trump’s speech from the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, to his supporters who then overran the Capitol, Baude and Paulsen said Trump delivered a “general and specific message” that the election was stolen, calling on the crowd to take immediate action to block the transfer of power before falling silent for hours as the insurrection progressed.
“Trump’s deliberate inaction renders his January 6 speech much more incriminating in hindsight, because it makes it even less plausible (if it was ever plausible) that the crowd’s reaction was all a big mistake or misunderstanding,” they write.
Oh … my … goodness!
When those upon whom you depend for legal support turn on you in this fashion, it seems to me that it’s time to call it quits.