By Stephen Macaulay
This isn’t hard, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:
“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.”
Let’s break down some aspects of this that ought to make even the most textualist members of the Supreme Court not need reach for their copy of Black’s:
- “any office, civil or military …” The presidency is an office. It has civil powers. The president is the Commander in Chief (per Article II, Section 2). Seems like it checks both boxes.
- “having previously taken an oath. . .to support the Constitution of the United States.” On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump took that oath.
- “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same …” With “the same” being the Constitution. While there could be some quibbling about whether Trump’s exhortation to the mob constituted an insurrection against the government in the form of Congress doing its job of certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, given what was revealed by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Trump’s efforts not to leave office that began before the election on November 3, 2020, it is clear he was knowingly violating Article II, Section 1: “The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President.” While he probably didn’t know that precise passage, he knew what he was doing.
- “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”… This is Trump’s final tweet of the day on January 6, 2021: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Sounds like he was giving comfort to what he describes as “great patriots” who stormed the Capitol and participated in what Matthew Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, recently described as “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”
Hard to imagine a strict constructionist not concluding that Trump is disqualified from holding the presidency, and if that is the case, then allowing him to run for that position is simply absurd.