Donald Trump might already be ineligible to serve as president of the United States in the future. That’s true even without an impeachment process that ends with a formal ban from future public office.
The relevant constitutional provision is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War and mentioned in the article of impeachment proposed before the House today. The provision bars a person from holding any office “under the United States” if the person has sworn an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government or “given aid to the enemies” of the U.S.
Does this provision to apply to Trump? The first part certainly does: Trump took an oath to uphold the Constitution when he became president.
The trickier question is the second part: Has Trump’s conduct amounted to insurrection? You can be sure that, if Trump runs for office in the future, someone will go to court charging that he is ineligible to become president because of his conduct leading up to, on and following Jan. 6, 2021.
The first question is whether the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection against the government of the United States. In vernacular terms, it certainly was. Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell called it an insurrection right off the bat. The article of impeachment speaks of insurrection.
As for the uprising part, again, not all the rioters wanted to bring down the government. But at least some clearly intended to interfere temporarily with the congressional process for declaring Joe Biden to be president. At least some wanted to use force to compel Congress to declare Trump, not Biden, the president-elect. That act would have subverted the democratic process. In some sense, at least, it would have amounted to overturning the U.S. government by force.
That question is, assuming the march on the Capitol was an insurrection: Did Trump himself engage in insurrection when he spoke to the crowd and encouraged or incited the march? If a court says yes, Trump isn’t eligible to be president again.
Last week, the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said it had written to Trump informing him it intends to seek his "disqualification" if he announces his presidential bid for the 2024 election.
CREW, which uses "aggressive legal action" to hold government officials accountable, asserted Trump should be disqualified from serving public office for his actions during the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol, referencing the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW, stated in a press release that the organization's message for the former president is "clear."
"If you seek office despite being disqualified under the Constitution for engaging in insurrection, we and others loyal to the Constitution will defend it," Bookbinder said.
Fascism is never peaceful
