No double jeopardy because impeachment is a political proceeding not a criminal trial.
Colorado judge rules Trump ‘engaged in an insurrection’ — but can still run for president
Ruling is here:
In other news, yet another shot at the king has missed.
Back to you in the studio, Howard.
Re the ruling I linked, the judge’s core argument is on page 96-97.
Although his reasoning makes sense, it seems strange that on the big questions, Trump lost, only winning on a true technicality, and one not relevant to any grand legal or moral principle. Looking at the footnote at the bottom on page 97, it seems that, in the judge’s way of thinking, the original intent of Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 was to, among other things, stop an insurrectionist from becoming president. But the lawmakers left the presidency out of their list of offices because of thinking no insurrectionist could be voted in by non-insurrectionist electors (and electors are on the forbidden-to-insurrectionists list). (Actually makes little sense – Jeff Davis could have easily come up with all-confederate-veteran lists of electors who had never sworn an employment oath to the U.S.A.)
Personally, I believe that who is elected to office should be decided by the voters, not by rules such as this. But in their wisdom, or lack thereof, I’m pretty sure the idea was to keep a guy like Trump off the presidential ballot just as much as they wanted to disqualify him from running for, say, senator.
The ruling suggests that if anyone who participated in January 6, or advocated it, is an elector, and ever made a relevant oath, their vote won’t count. If the electoral vote is close, Democratic lawyers will presumably check to see if any red state electors are insurrectionists and then what their employment history is. They had better also make sure no former (or current) government employee insurrectionist, by hook or crook, tries to become a Democratic elector.
The penalty shall not extend beyond removal from office and a bar from future office. In principle, the Senate could bar from future office without removal from the current office, or convict but still do nothing.
Keeping score, Trump is a convicted sex offender. How should this most recent finding of fact be characterized?
“A Colorado court has ruled that Trump indeed engaged in insurrection.”
Is there a more vivid but still accurate description? We can’t call this a conviction, right?
Personally I think democracy is propped not only by elections but also by democratic forbearance. Otherwise you can run an anti-corruption campaign in say 2008, then switch out to authoritarian rule (like eg Hamas did). So the 3rd section of the 14th amendment helpfully corrects a shortcoming in the original constitution. Furthermore claiming that there’s a meaningful distinction between “Support” of the constitution (in Section 3) and an oath to “Preserve, protect, and defend” constitution is bizarre. It shouldn’t be necessary to load a thesaurus full of synonyms into the oath to the constitution.
If you want to keep the Republic, insurrection and election tampering must have consequences.
Let’s be accurate. He was found civilly liable for sexual assault. He wasn’t charged criminally, nor was he convicted, and thus is not an offender.
Again, it wasn’t a criminal trial. He wasn’t “convicted”
Huh?
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having 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 as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Seems to me Trump had previously taken an oath and was an officer of the US as president. When he did the insurrection he was not the president of the US so not protected by that office. He then engaged in insurrection against the US.
I don’t follow the judge’s reasoning in this case but IANAL. Just my $0.02
Wasn’t he still President on J6? Biden’s inauguration was January 20?
Has anyone read any judicial or scholarly opinions that indicate from a common sense perspective why the drafters would have wanted to exclude presidents? IOW, setting aside all the parsing and legalistic word and historical fact wrangling, a simple layperson-level conclusion along the lines of “And here’s why, from their perspective at least, the drafters thought it made perfect sense to exclude a president from this restriction…”
That’s the part I’m missing. I realize that judicial rulings often (usually?) turn on analyses of what a particular semi-colon signified and which legal principles are hiding under a penumbra.
But for a dumb layman like me, is there a common sense answer to why the drafters would see it as beyond the pale for virtually any other elected or appointed official to engage in such heinous acts, but a-okay for a president? Seems absurd.
I’m with you @Stratocaster, I don’t see why there would be a rule that says insurrectionists are barred from every office except the one at the top. That does not make any kind of sense to me.
Yes, let’s be accurate (this is the Dope after all). Webster’s New World Dictionary and dictionary.com define convicted as, “proven or declared guilty of an offense, especially after a legal trial:” or “to prove (a person) guilty”, or “to judge and find guilty of an offense charged”. I see absolutely no implication that the word can’t be applied to a civil matter.
Black’s legal dictionary is a little different:
conviction. 1. The act or process of judicially finding someone guilty of a crime; the state of having been proven guilty. 2. The judgment (as by a jury verdict) that a person is guilty of a crime. 3. a strong belief of opinion. - convict vb
So standard dictionaries refer to an offense (could be civil or criminal I say) while in a strictly legal context conviction implies a decision by a criminal court. The title of this article by a law firm shows that civil offenses can exist: “What’s the Difference: Civil Offense vs. Criminal Offense”.
I conclude that calling Trump a convicted sex offender is wholly legit outside of a legal setting, as civil courts can indeed find defendants guilty of offenses. It would not be accurate to call Trump a convicted sex criminal, and I will not do that: Donald Trump is a sex offender convicted in civil court. Colloquially speaking that is. IANAL.
Is Trump a sex maniac? I am not qualified to make such a medical determination.
There’s an argument in legal circles that POTUS does not count as an “officer of the United States” for constitutional purposes. For example, Article II, Section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
If the President is an “Officer,” then why is he mentioned separately? There’s a great deal of disagreement on the whole issue.
Not exactly.
I linked to the ruling earlier. The argument on pages 96 - 97 ends, in the footnote, thusly:
I could summarize further arguments Judge Wallace makes, but suggest reading what she wrote.
For what it is worth, here is a semi-bio of the judge:
I did read that section. It’s what prompted my post. That line of reasoning seems really weak. “Let’s not add two words to the law. Too much trouble when there prolly won’t be any electors open to such a villain. Yeah, adding those two words—way overkill.”
The rest of that section is exactly the “how many codicils can dance on the head of a penumbra” parsing I referred to—i.e., tortured analysis of how specific words could possibly be interpreted if you squinted at them a certain way.
It’s what led to my question: Has anyone posted a scholarly answer along the lines of “And all this parsing aside, clearly what the drafters intended to accomplish by excluding the president was…”
(from the footnote in the judgement)
So I guess the reasoning is that this amendment was strictly for the purposes of excluding those confederates who had recently tried to tear the country apart. It certainly is possible that the writers of this amendment could not have fathomed the possibility that a sitting president would try to overthrow congress after a legally binding and accepted election. So they didn’t explicitly forbid this. To them, it must have seemed as unnecessary as writing a law forbidding a burning fire from being underwater.
They had a solution in mind - impeachment. They also could not have fathomed a large portion of congress being so spineless as to actually look the other way after an attempted insurrection by a sitting president.
Googling, I can’t find it.
Historians of the fourteenth amendment focus on the rights of ordinary citizens, including Black citizens, not on the rights of presidential candidates. So my old-history-major guess is that if the radical republicans left if out in some sort of compromise with civil rights squishes, any existing record of the compromise is buried in manuscript archives.
Judge Wallace speculates on page 101:
I have no argument with this, also on page 101:
If Trump was disqualified, I think DeSantis would get most of Donald’s primary votes, and be the nominee. This isn’t such a good outcome in my mind. Better to let people vote for whom they wish if legal. Appellate judges will now decide the legality.
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One legal pundit thinks the finding of insurrection alone is extremely damaging to Trump. Not putting too much stock in one guy’s opinion, but here’s hoping.
Meh. Trumps team is (of course) spinning it as a total vindication for the Orange One, and a sure bet that he wins a landslide victory ahead.
Voters will not hear what actually went down.
True, but fortunately, this article seems to be about legal practicalities rather than poll effect.