'No way': Legal expert debunks Trump's latest defense in 14th Amendment lawsuits

One of the amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court ahead of their decision to determine if former President Donald Trump should be disqualified from the 2024 presidential tears apart the notion that he's immune simply because everything he did on Jan. 6, 2021 didn't amount to a Civil War.

Former Acting Solicitor General of the United States Neal Katyal highlighted this particular brief during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday.

The brief in question was written by constitutional scholar brothers Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar, and Katyal argued that they dispel any claim by Trump's defense that an insurrection has to mirror that of a Civil War.

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Katyal said that their filing "totally put to rest this idea that Donald Trump has, which is that you have to engage in an insurrection just like the Civil War, nothing else qualifies under the 14th Amendment."

O'Donnell also cited another brief that was written by 25 professional scholars with expertise in 19th-century American history that analyzes the aims of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause in Section 3, noting that it indeed covers the president and further doesn't require extended congressional intervention.

Collectively, Katyal saw these briefs and others as "reciting all of the evidence from the time of the 14th Amendment" being written and he summarizes their stance as saying "no way" that the amendment was only meant to apply to members of the Confederacy.

"The 14th Amendment wasn't just about the Civil War, it was about making sure that people who were insurrectionists, who had given aid to comfort, are not able to be voted for."

The Amar brothers' brief attempts to see the 14th Amendment's authors as having the foresight to keep the language alive in perpetuity to prevent future rebellions or insurrections.

“[I]n one obvious and high-profile respect, Section Three as enacted went far beyond the early draft. It referred to all insurrections, past and future, and not merely to ‘the late insurrection’ of the 1860s," it reads. "It laid down a rule for the benefit of generations yet unborn — for us today, if only we are wise enough and faithful enough to follow its words as written and intended.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Correction: Akhil Amar's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.