'Wrong, wrong, wrong': Ex-federal prosecutor rejects Maine Democrat’s challenge to Trump ballot removal

Citing Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, has removed 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump from the state's primary ballot — a decision that parallels a similar one by the Colorado Supreme Court but is at odds with decisions in Michigan and California, which have decided to keep Trump on their ballots.

Section 3 states that an "officer" who has engaged in "insurrection" is disqualified from running for office. Some of Trump's critics, including conservative retired judge J. Michael Luttig, have been arguing that the former president is ineligible to run in 2024 because his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results were an example of "insurrection."

On Friday afternoon, December 29, a CNN panel hosted by Dana Bash examined the Maine ruling. And former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams vehemently disagreed with Rep. Jared Golden's (D-Maine) argument that "until he has been found guilty of the crime of insurrection," Trump "should be allowed on the ballot."

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Williams told Bash and her CNN colleagues Paula Reid and Kristen Holmes, "With all due respect to the congressman, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a perfectly good position that he's taking, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say that someone needs to be convicted of insurrection or whatever else before being removed from the ballot. And say it again with me: This is why the Supreme Court needs to take this issue up. Because there are these questions of how you even define what the term insurrection means, how you establish whether somebody is an insurrectionist, who makes the decision altogether. These are all open and need to be resolved."

Reid, CNN's chief legal affairs correspondent, also called for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up this matter, saying, "To not weigh in, I think that would be a disaster…. I mean, here we have a split across the states."

READ MORE: George Conway tears apart 'logically weak' dissents in Colorado Supreme Court’s Trump ruling

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