It’s inaccurate to say this is a unique legal initiative for the Left. There are scores of anti-Trump Republicans who are going along with this shoddy 14th Amendment business to prevent Trump from serving another term as president of the United States. I would bet heavily that this legal gobbledygook wouldn’t have come to pass if Joe Biden wasn’t in such miserable shape for re-election. His economic agenda and the “Bidenomics” messaging have stagnated because inflation continues to be a cancer on American families. The mounting corroborating evidence and testimony from whistleblowers at the IRS point to an elaborate government influence-peddling operation the family was running that circumvented tax laws. Outright bribes were reportedly paid to the Bidens, structured through various payments wired to a network of shell corporations the family runs.
This story isn’t going away, and it’s an election-killer. So, here’s the Hail Mary chuck into the endzone, placing our institutions at risk. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board did not defend Trump over his actions on January 6 but did point out the obvious: it wasn’t a rebellion or insurrection. It was a riot that turned violent, as many have in the past. Trump is facing nearly 100 charges, none of them involve fomenting insurrection. There’s no evidence. It’s the biggest hole in the argument weaponizing Section III of the 14th Amendment against Trump. Also, regarding lawsuits, it will be hard for parties to prove how this event injured them. It’s also been tried against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). She emerged victorious in that legal bout.
Moreover, the publication notes the most important aspect: there was a transfer of power, the government remained intact, and our institutional health was fine during the Trump years. This legal action, unsurprisingly and ironically, puts all that in danger. The anti-Trump factions are willing to burn the village to save it. Using Vietnam War-era strategies will end in disaster, and we have to hope when the Supreme Court decides on this issue in October that it’s a brutal smackdown of this heinous attempt to deny the constitutional rights of those with whom some people find disagreeable.
The op-ed is quite the takedown of the hysterics that have infected liberals and some squishy, good-for-nothing Republicans who should just become Democrats by now anyway:
For starters, they assert that Mr. Trump’s actions after the 2020 election amount to an insurrection and that this is self-evident. Mr. Trump’s behavior was reprehensible, as we noted at the time and have since. But that’s far from saying it was an insurrection or rebellion under the statutory or constitutional meaning of those terms.
The Jan. 6 rally on the Mall turned into a riot at the Capitol. This was an obstruction of a federal proceeding—i.e., the counting of electoral votes. But there have been many riots in American history against U.S. policy that turned violent. The 1970s were rife with them, including bombings of government buildings.
It is surely relevant that Mr. Trump hasn’t been charged with insurrection under 18 U.S.C. Section 2383. Does anyone think special prosecutor Jack Smith would have refrained from charging that crime if he believed he could prove it in court? Instead he has charged a conspiracy to overturn the election, but that is not a rebellion.
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All the more so because proponents argue that the disqualification clause is “self-executing,” meaning that it automatically applies to someone who meets the criteria. They say it doesn’t require a criminal conviction in court and can be invoked by state officials to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. So the Michigan secretary of state, an elected Democrat, could bounce him from that state’s ballot.
This would seem to violate the due-process protections that are explicit elsewhere in the Constitution. Removing Mr. Trump by fiat would also deny voters the constitutional right to vote for the candidate of their choice...
This is how tens of millions of voters would see it, and the fury in response might not be limited to verbal protests or marches. Knocking Mr. Trump off the ballot would validate, in the eyes of his supporters, his claims that the election system is rigged and corrupt.
Advocates of disqualification say not to worry, the judiciary would settle all this after Mr. Trump challenged his disqualification. They say the Supreme Court would have to hear the case, however much the Justices would rather not. That’s probably right but hardly reassuring. This would throw the Court into the middle of the presidential race, jeopardizing the Court’s reputation as apolitical with partisans on one side or the other.
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For Mr. Trump’s opponents, these risks are justified because the former President poses a unique threat to U.S. democracy. They’re willing to put democracy at risk in order to save it. But U.S. institutions held up reasonably well despite the strains of the Trump Presidency—even the events of Jan. 6. The transfer of power took place on schedule. Republicans across the government broke with Mr. Trump and supported that transfer.
This publication isn’t hard-core Trump, obviously, but they’re not going to defend this illiberal attempt to subvert our election with this 14th Amendment nonsense. They also comically highlight that if Democrats are so worried about Trump 2.0, it will be their doing by keeping Joe Biden propped up.
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