As required by section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, any officer of the United States who takes an oath to “protect and defend” the Constitution but then engages in a rebellion or insurrection against it or gives aid and comfort to those who do, is disqualified from ever holding public office. Several constitutional scholars have opined this clause is “self-executing” and requires no criminal conviction or vote of Congress. Trump is, therefore, disqualified from seeking public office in America as a matter of public record, as follows.
Trump unlawfully tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Upon failing, he summoned hordes of angry supporters for a “wild” protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021—the date of formal certification of the 2020 presidential election under the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution. Trump mobilized violent extremists and now-convicted seditionists whom he had previously and publicly instructed to “stand back and stand by” while in a nationally televised debate. Others coaxed to participate Trump had inflamed for months with the lie that the 2020 election would be “rigged” and was being “stolen” from them. Once assembled at the Ellipse, Trump repeated that, directing them to march on the Capitol, knowing many were armed, urging them to “fight like hell or you won’t have a country anymore!” In other words, urging them to stop Vice President Mike Pence and Congress from lawfully doing their constitutional duty to certify the official electoral college votes that Biden had won.
On January 6, Trump, knowing Pence had no power to do so, urged him to overturn the election results and continued to exert public pressure on Pence on January 6 by setting the mob against him, which erected gallows in front of the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump stated earlier on the Elipse that “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election!” Pence and Members of Congress had to flee for their lives, halting their constitutional duties. Knowing the Capitol was under attack while watching the assault unfold on television, Trump tweeted to the mob that Pence lacked the “courage” to overturn the election, predictably exacerbating the violence. He then willfully refused to take any action to stop the attack for nearly three more hours as his mob ransacked the Capitol, assaulting police and calling for the murder of elected officials. He refused to deploy a federal response, refused to call off his mob, and willfully abandoned his affirmative constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” He willfully abdicated his role as commander-in-chief of the military by refusing to call out the National Guard. Instead, he exploited the violence and actively pressured Members of Congress to further delay the election certification. Only after repeated pleas from his staff and family did he finally post a video at 4:17 p.m., instructing his mob to “go home,” adding that he “love[d]” them and understood their “pain” over an “election that was stolen from us” and this only after it became clear they would not achieve his goal.
Later that night, as president of the United States, he justified the deadly attack on the seat of his own government, tweeting at 6:01 p.m. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day forever!” Trump was this mob’s leader, and it was his weapon. Trump had summoned them from all over to come to Washington. He then instructed the mob to march on the Capitol, and like lemmings, they dutifully complied. Many in the mob left the Capitol grounds only when, after hours of violence against police officers and interference with Congress’s mandated duties, Trump told them to leave. A Capitol Police officer whom the mob had attacked died the next day, and four others died by suicide in the following months.
Trump’s goal was to unlawfully keep himself in office by invalidating the votes of more than 81 million Americans who cast ballots for Biden. It is well established by a bipartisan congressional committee investigation, at which almost all the evidence was offered under oath by Republicans, that the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol and surrounding events constituted an “insurrection” against the Constitution within the meaning of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment and that Trump not only “engaged in” the insurrection but was its “central cause.”
Moreover, a majority of the members of Congress, including 57 members of the Senate from both parties, voted in January 2021, respectively, to impeach and then remove Trump from office as a result of these offenses against the United States. Presently, Trump stands trial for crimes connected with this insurrection after both federal and state grand juries voted to charge him. His election denialism and political violence still continue, posing an existential threat to democracy in New Hampshire and throughout America.
Because section 3 of the 14th Amendment, by its plain terms, does not require a criminal conviction or an impeachment for it to be actionable, but merely the same degree of factual investigation as other constitutional qualifications such as having attained the age of 35 or being a natural-born American citizen, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, who is bound by both state law n the U. S. Constitution, is derelict in his duty for failing to bar Trump from the New Hampshire ballot. His excuse: “At a time when we need to ensure transparency and build confidence among voters around the country, the delegate selection process should not be the battleground to test this constitutional question.”
The only transparency evident here, however, is that the secretary will clearly abdicate his constitutional duty and selectively confine it to determining whether a candidate is 35 years of age or born in the U.S. If Benedict Arnold came back today to declare his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the New Hampshire primary, would not Scanlan disqualify him based upon the known fact of his having been a traitor? This is no different. Both Arnold and Trump are proven enemies of the United States. Trump has made it clear that he will never honor his oath of office. Therefore, he must be disqualified from being put in a position to foment yet another insurrection for which he is already laying the groundwork. The time to act, Mr. Scanlan, is now, not after Trump becomes the traitor-nominee of your party.
Stand up. Abide by your oath. Do your constitutional duty for America and answer the call!
