Former federal prosecutor: Maine sec’y of state’s disqualification of Trump 'a profile in courage'

The December 28 decision by Maine's elections chief to disqualify Donald Trump from the state's Republican primary ballot was both legally sound and morally courageous, according to a former federal prosecutor.

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe co-authored with Harvard University law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, Dennis Aftergut — a former assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of California – said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows demonstrated both her legal expertise and her integrity in how she applied the US Constitution in her disqualification decision.

"Bellows’ decision enacted, in word and in deed, the too rarely remembered reality that the fair interpretation and faithful application of statutory as well as constitutional law is entrusted no less to executives than to judges — and that the US system for electing presidents expressly empowers state legislatures to decide how each state’s selection is to be made," Aftergut and Tribe wrote. "And she deliberately refused to abdicate her responsibility to make a call, a responsibility that her state’s Legislature specifically delegated to her."

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"She did so in the face of predictable threats that came quickly after Trump posted her biographical data online," they added. "What once would have been simple allegiance to the law has become a profile in courage."

Bellows disqualified Trump based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (also known as the "insurrection clause"), saying the January 6, 2021 siege on the US Capitol constituted an insurrection, and that the former president played a major role in stirring up the crowd of his supporters that ended up ransacking the US Capitol and injuring hundreds of police officers in the attack. Bellows told CBS News last week that her job description compelled her to act quickly to convene a hearing based on voters' challenges to Trump's candidacy, and that disqualifying the former president was necessary given the US Constitution's explicit ban on candidates from holding federal office who have either "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the country "or given aid and comfort to enemies thereof."

"I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3," she said. "And I'm also mindful that no presidential candidate has ever engaged in insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment."

In their op-ed, Aftergut and Tribe admired how Bellows "pinpointed" the dangerous implications of Trump's claim that his enabling of insurrectionists was protected by the First Amendment.

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"Upholding that claim would render the key democracy-protecting provision of the 14th Amendment a nullity for insurrection masterminds. It would turn the First Amendment into a doomsday device for democracy," they wrote. "Bellows' decision stands as a paradigm. We are all witnesses to how a fearless public official exercises her delegated state authority in our Constitution’s intricate federal system."

Click here to read Aftergut and Tribe's op-ed in full.