{"id":27768,"date":"2023-08-04T13:11:33","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T20:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=27768"},"modified":"2023-08-04T13:11:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T20:11:35","slug":"could-trumps-criminal-cases-keep-him-off-the-ballot-heres-what-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/08\/04\/could-trumps-criminal-cases-keep-him-off-the-ballot-heres-what-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Trump’s criminal cases keep him off the ballot? Here’s what experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>Bob Egelko<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aug. 2, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Experts
Experts disagree on whether the 14th Amendment ban on office-holders who have aided \u201cinsurrection\u201d could prohibit former President Donald Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024.Matt York\/Associated Press<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment permanently bars any government official from public office who has taken part in, or given \u201caid and comfort to,\u201d any \u201cinsurrection or rebellion\u201d against the United States. Could this be applied to former President Donald Trump, whose indictment this week accused him of obstructing an official proceeding \u2014 the certification of the 2020 election \u2014 by encouraging the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no consensus, in part because the situation is unprecedented, and the constitutional language is less than explicit. While the federal grand jury charged Trump with trying to interfere with the vote tally, it did not expressly accuse him of inciting an insurrection. Even if he is convicted, his appeals may still be pending on Election Day. And the divided Congress may have a role to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But an attorney for an advocacy group that is planning legal action to bar Trump from the ballot in a number of states says a recent case in New Mexico shows that the former president has already done enough to disqualify him, as a matter of law, from seeking or holding any federal or state office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Couy Griffin was removed as a commissioner<\/a> in Otero County, N.M., and barred from seeking future office by a state judge in September after being convicted of a federal misdemeanor for entering the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Griffin, co-founder of a group called Cowboys for Trump, aided in the attempted insurrection by \u201cjoining the mob and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds,\u201d said Francis Mathew, a judge in the state\u2019s First Judicial District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Griffin\u2019s case shows that no federal insurrection charge or congressional vote is needed to prohibit Trump from running for president, said Donald Sherman, executive vice president and chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which filed the case against Griffin. He said a half-dozen former Confederate officials were disqualified from office in similar cases after the Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe indictment is further proof of what the Jan. 6 (congressional) committee laid out and what we saw with our own eyes and ears: that Donald Trump incited and engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States by trying to overturn a free and fair election,\u201d Sherman told The Chronicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said CREW plans to file suits soon in several states seeking to bar Trump, the current Republican front-runner, from their presidential ballot next year. Sherman declined to identify the states, but other groups held demonstrations last month outside election offices in California, Georgia, Colorado and Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A contrasting view came from Edward Foley, a constitutional law professor and director of the Election Law program at Ohio State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wording of the 14th Amendment, Foley said, shows that only those who are convicted of a specific federal crime \u2014 engaging in, inciting or aiding \u201cany rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,\u201d as defined by Section 2383 of the law \u2014 can be disqualified from office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, as Foley noted, Tuesday\u2019s indictment accused Trump of conspiring to deprive voters of their rights and interfering with the legal process for counting votes, he was not charged with violating Section 2383.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some commentators saw the law differently. Marjorie Cohn, a former professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and former president of the left-leaning National Lawyers Guild, said the final decision would most likely be up to Congress, not the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe that the most recent indictment of Trump does allege that he engaged in \u2018insurrection\u2019 \u2014 an effort to keep the duly elected government from taking office,\u201d Cohn said. But it would still take \u201ca majority of both houses\u201d to invoke the 14th Amendment against the former president, she said, and \u201cthat is unlikely to happen in the current Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a more conservative perspective, Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge, said he saw nothing in Trump\u2019s latest indictment that referred to insurrection or rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, \u201cI would not be surprised if advocates were able to persuade election officials in one or more states to try to bar him from the ballot,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cSuch a move would presumably be appealed quickly to the Supreme Court.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley and a liberal scholar who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, said the outlook is unclear because the 14th Amendment \u201cdoes not define rebellion or insurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe that the most recent indictment of Trump does allege that he engaged in \u2018insurrection\u2019 \u2014 an effort to keep the duly elected government from taking office,\u201d Chemerinsky said. \u201cAnd I do expect that there will be efforts, by CREW and others, to keep Trump off the ballot. I think that if Trump is convicted, these are much more likely to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @BobEgelko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Bob Egelko<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"San<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\"HEARST\u00a92023 Hearst Communications, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Egelko Aug. 2, 2023 (SFChronicle.com) The Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment permanently bars any government official from public office who has taken part in, or given \u201caid and comfort to,\u201d any \u201cinsurrection or rebellion\u201d against the United States. Could this be applied to former President Donald Trump, whose indictment this week… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[335],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27769,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27768\/revisions\/27769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}