After the havoc and Hell this nation suffered throughout the entirety of Donald J. Trump’s 4 long, hard years in the White House, combined with his truly terrifying attempts to remain in power after clearly and fairly losing his 2020 bid at a second presidential term, millions of Americans and people around the globe were left with one particular, sinking question in the pits of their stomachs — how could this man ever rightfully return to the White House after what he has done?
The man has been indicted four times now, on a total of 91 different felony charges, and it’s showing no end in sight.
And yet, here we are, watching as that very same man launches his third consecutive presidential campaign, with a fear in our bones that he will actually be successful in the end.
However, some of this nation’s top legal scholars are now speaking out and noting that, regardless of the results of Donald Trump’s numerous impending trials, the disgraced former president is already ineligible to hold office in the United States again, based on multiple cold, hard provisions found in the US Constitution.
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Harvard Law School professor of constitutional law emeritus Laurence H. Tribe and retired conservative Judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Michael Luttig co-authored a deep-dive column in The Atlantic, in which they outlined the roadmap with which Donald J. Trump has already disqualified himself from the office of the United States presidency based on his role in indicting the violent, deadly January 6th Capitol insurrection — whether Judge Tanya Chutkan finds him guilty or not.
Following extensive research into the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, both legal scholars concluded that Donald Trump’s role in the January 6th riot and his overall attempts to enact a government coup and overthrow the 2020 presidential election are technically enough to permanently bar him from office in the United States. However, both Tribe and Luttig noted that it would take the force of Congress and the nation as a whole to put it into action.
The scholars note that the “often-overlooked Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government …any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies.” According to Tribe and Luttig, Trump not only crossed that line, he far surpassed it.
“Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point,” they write in the wide-reaching column. “The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation.”
The experts go on to add that Donald Trump’s actions “place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause,” going on to explain, “The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause.”
“The process that will play out over the coming year could give rise to momentary social unrest and even violence. But so could the failure to engage in this constitutionally mandated process. For our part, we would pray for neither unrest nor violence from the American people during a process of faithful application and enforcement of their Constitution,” Tribe and Luttig penned as they concluded, “The men who framed and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment entrusted to us, ‘the People of the United States,’ the means to vigilantly protect against those who would make a mockery of American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law—and of America itself. It fell to the generations that followed to enforce our hallowed Constitution and ensure that our Union endures. Today, that responsibility falls to us.”
Read the fiery full column here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
