A 'risky' 14th Amendment strategy to get rid of Trump could have unintended dire consequences: legal expert

01 September 2023

A combination of liberal/progressive, centrist and conservative Trump critics — most notably on the right, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig — have been arguing that Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment disqualifies him from running for president in the 2024 election.

Luttig has been stressing that one who engages in "insurrection or rebellion," according to the U.S. Constitution, cannot run for president. And Luttig isn't the only one on the right who is making that argument.

Two conservative professors — the University of Chicago's William Baude and St. Thomas University's Michael Stokes — have reached the same conclusion.

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Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are at the heart of two of the four criminal indictments he is facing — one federal, one for the State of Georgia. And various state attorneys general have been researching the matter to see if they believes that Luttig, Baude and Stokes are correct and if Trump, according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, should be excluded from their state ballots.

But in an article published by Axios on August 31, journalist Sareen Habeshian stress that trying to use a 14th Amendment strategy against Trump could be risky.

"Trump has used the legal cases against him to bolster his campaign and further his claims of election interference and fraud," Habeshian explains. "If he's disqualified through the 14th Amendment, it could ramp up his base…. And if a secretary of state — or a group of them — took such an action, it would likely be challenged in court."

Habeshian references an article written by CNN's Marshall Cohen and published on August 31. Cohen notes that in late 19th Century, the 14th Amendment was used to disqualify some ex-Confederates from running for president but hasn't been used in that way since then.

However, law professor Sherrilyn Ifill, formerly of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and now with the Howard University Law School, told Axios she has "no doubt" that Section 3 is relevant to Trump's actions following the 2020 presidential election.

Ifill told Axios, "I am convinced that Section 3 was designed to protect our democracy against precisely the threat that the former President constitutes to our republic."

Find Axios' full report at this link and CNN's article here.

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