holy shit, these Federalist Society lawyers want to 14th Amendment the fuck out of Donald Trump
if Section 3 wasn’t written for Donald Trump, who was it written for?
the complete text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War, reads:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
“engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
hmm. does that sound like any fuckface former president we know?
I mean, if Section 3 wasn’t written for Donald Trump, who the fuck was it written for?
it seems obvious to me. it seems obvious to you — and it absolutely seemed obvious to the January 6th Committee.
but do you know who else it seems obvious to? William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two law professors from the Federalist Society.
holy shit. the Federalist Society. that’s huge.
“The bottom line is that Donald Trump both ‘engaged in’ ‘insurrection or rebellion’ and gave ‘aid or comfort’ to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”
“Section 3’s disqualification rule may and must be followed — applied, honored, obeyed, enforced, carried out — by anyone whose job it is to figure out whether someone is legally qualified to office,” the authors wrote. That includes election administrators, the article said.
again, holy shit.
the Federalist Society should totally fucking love Donald Trump. he allowed them to completely pack the federal judiciary with one underqualified hack judge after another — including three of the hackiest Supreme Court Justices imaginable.
so for two Federalist Society dudes to come out on the side of constitutionally shitcanning Donald Trump, that’s a big fucking deal.
now. I know what you’re going to say: Uncle Jeff, two law professors do not a Federalist Society make. and yes, that’s true.
but Steven G. Calabresi, a founder of the Federalist Society, called the article “a tour de force.”
so, baby steps.
of course, 14th amendmenting Little Donny Fuckface is a pipe dream wrapped inside a long shot floating in a big bowl of yeah, right.
the simplest route to barring Trump from running would be federal legislation. but that’s not going to happen.
that leaves it up to state and local governments and judges to remove Trump from the ballot in their jurisdictions.
so you end up with a nightmare patchwork of Donny on the ballot here, not on the ballot there, and so on.
but we can dream, can’t we? Thom Hartmann believes there’s a clear path to getting it done:
Red states, of course, won’t go along with this, but all it would take are a handful of Blue states — particularly swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — to put a ballot ban into place to effectively preventing him from ever regaining the title and power he held and abused between January 20, 2017 and that date in 2021.
and just the idea of a possible Donald Trump-Federalist Society split puts me in a good mood.
meanwhile, even as I’m typing this, in a federal courtroom in DC, Trump’s ace team of parking garage lawyers is getting an earful from Judge Chutkan.
stay tuned.
I love Judge Chutkan: "He’s a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every single other defendant." (from the hearing that's going on right now. https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1690018450217857025 )
I’m sort of hoping that members of the jury will get to hear Trump in 2017 swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States before deciding whether he’s guilty of conspiracy in the January 6th fuckageddon. Frankly, the GOP’s benefactors, Koch Industries, should add to their toilet paper line of Angel Soft and Quilted Northern with a new brand, called “Constitution” tissue, endorsed by an entire roomful of US Senators who couldn’t bring themselves to convict Trump for wiping his ass with it.