Kicking the 14th Amendment down the road
Whistling past a graveyard. Tiptoeing through a minefield. Neither the courts nor election officials nor Congress want to touch ruling Donald Trump ineligible to serve as president.
A Denver judge on Friday found Donald Trump remains eligible for the state’s 2024 presidential ballot even though he engaged in an insurrection, joining courts elsewhere that have rejected attempts to disqualify the leading Republican candidate.
District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace determined the provision of the 14th Amendment barring insurrectionists from holding office does not apply to presidents and, therefore, does not disqualify Trump.
“While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments on both sides, the Court holds that the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the Amendment applies combined with the fact that Section Three specifies that the disqualifying oath is one to ‘support’ the Constitution whereas the Presidential oath is to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution,” Wallace wrote.
‘Tis the season for reluctance
“To be clear, part of the Court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent,” she wrote in a Nov. 17 order.
Nonetheless, the 102-page order offered a damning critique of Trump’s conduct leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, and Wallace concluded Trump did, in fact, incite an insurrection to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
The decision by District Judge Sarah B. Wallace is the third ruling in a little over a week against lawsuits seeking to knock Trump off the ballot by citing Section 3 of the amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court last week said Trump could remain on the primary ballot because political parties have sole choice over who appears, while a Michigan judge ruled that Congress is the proper forum for deciding whether Section 3 applies to Trump.
Three judges. Three different explanations for why they could not rule Donald Trump disqualified under the 14th Amendment from serving again in elected office.
Ruby Freeman knows well what it’s like to draw the wrath of the Trump cult. As do other election workers. Members of Congress and Secret Service members who sheltered in place during the January 6th attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters do too. Prosecutors involved in Trump cases in New York, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. face a flood of threats and require beefed-up security details. Sen. Mitt Romney has spent $5,000/day on personal and family security since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As we head into holiday season, we’ll repeatedly see Hans Gruber fall from the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Tower. But not before he ruins Joe Takagi’s London-made suit by splattering it with Takagi’s brains and blood. The priciest judge’s robes I found online are not nearly that expensive. Still, if I were wearing one I’d rather not see it ruined that way either.
How much of a factor in a judge’s decision-making in a Trump case is the deepening fog of threats, menace, and intimidation from Trump and his followers over Trump’s prosecutions and his attempts to return to the White House he called “a real dump“?
I don’t know. But I do know we put up with this shit. And I’m sick of it.