A day after former president Trump’s lawyers demanded the Maine secretary of state recuse herself from her upcoming decision on the former president’s ballot eligibility under the 14th Amendment – citing her past statements about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot; Shenna Bellows – a Democrat – has kicked Trump off the state’s primary ballot.
The letter from Trump’s lawyers seeking Bellows’ recusal cites two social media posts Bellows issued the day Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, which concerned the Capitol riot.
“The Jan 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. Today 57 Senators including King & Collins found Trump guilty. That’s short of impeachment but nevertheless an indictment. The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed,” Bellows wrote on Twitter, the platform now known as X.
The letter also takes aim at a post Bellows issued on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, in which she reposted a news report highlighting Bellows’s efforts to protect election workers.
“One year after the violent insurrection, it’s important to do all we can to safeguard our elections,” Bellows wrote.
Thus, the lawyers argued, Bellows “has already passed judgment” on Trump’s “core assumptions.”
But, as The Hill reports, unlike other states, where plaintiffs have sued over Trump’s eligibility in court, Maine’s system first allows the secretary of state to weigh in – unilaterally, Judge Dredd-style.
Challengers can then appeal in state court.
Bellows determined that the former president could not run for office due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
She argued his actions violated the 14th Amendment.
Maine is now the second state to bar the president citing 14th Amendment claims, following Colorado’s Supreme Court decision.
As we noted previously, the question will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court, which constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley says “will be overturned because it is wrong on the history and the language of the 14th Amendment.”
As I have previously written, the disqualification of Trump is based on the use of a long-dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
After the Civil War, House members were outraged to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, seeking to take the oath with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.
They had all previously taken the same oath and then violated it to join a secession movement that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
That was a true rebellion.
January 6, 2021, was a riot.
As a reminder, Maine has only four electoral votes but it’s one of two states to split them, and Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020.
Caden Pearson reports at The Epoch Times that the Trump campaign issued a statement denouncing the decision, vowing to move quickly to fight the Maine secretary of state’s “atrocious decision” in state court to prevent it from taking effect.
“The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist, and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.
“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter. Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot.
“Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power,” he added.
Mr. Cheung noted that state and federal courts in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island, and West Virginia, along with 10 more federal jurisdictions, have rejected “these bad-faith, bogus 14th Amendment ballot challenges.”
“We know both the Constitution and the American people are on our side in this fight. President Trump’s dominating campaign has a commanding lead in the polls that has dramatically expanded as Crooked Joe Biden’s presidency continues to fail,” the Trump campaign spokesperson added.
“We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect, and President Trump will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again.”
Jason Meister, a member of President Trump’s campaign advisory panel in New York, told The Epoch Times that the Maine action would fail.
“These 14th amendment challenges are last gasping breaths of a dying party,” he said.
Isn’t it the very definition of ‘tyranny‘ that one person unilaterally decides that the residents of Maine do not deserve democracy?
Eliminating a political rival from the ballot unravels the core of a constitutional republic, driven by a repressive government’s fear that their misconduct will be exposed, jeopardizing their fragile grip on authority.
— Rblv73 (@Rblv73) December 29, 2023
All of which means, as Ben Shapiro wrote earlier, that “2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election? Under what circumstances, precisely, would Republicans accept the result of a Biden election?”
“The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete—and perhaps violent—chaos at this point.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:40
