Trump is facing a new lawsuit charging he is ineligible to run for president in 2024, CNN reported on Tuesday — this time filed in the state of Minnesota.
The lawsuit, filed by the advocacy group Free Speech for People, argues Trump is disqualified from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, which excludes those who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists from running for federal office.
This comes after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), another watchdog group, filed a similar lawsuit in the state of Colorado, on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters. Similar legal actions are advancing in Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
“Donald J. Trump, through his words and actions, after swearing an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution, then engaged in insurrection as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” said the suit filed by Free Speech for People. “He is disqualified from holding the presidency or any other office under the United States.”
The lawsuit faces some challenges, most notably that the 14th Amendment doesn't specify a mechanism to disqualify insurrectionists, beyond granting Congress the power to do so. Only a handful of people have been disqualified under this provision, all of them former Confederates who fought against the Union in the Civil War.
Some Trump-supportive legal scholar have also argued that the provision can't apply without an actual conviction for an insurrection-related offense, although retired Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who has spearheaded the disqualification movement along with conservative former Judge Michael Luttig, says the clear historical context indicates the authors of the amendment did not require a conviction.
