If Republicans are serious about capturing the White House next year, their best bet would be to ditch Donald Trump.
That’s according to the findings of a newly published University of Pennsylvania Law School study authored by two staunch conservatives that says Trump would be ineligible to serve because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld writes for Just Security.
Sonnenfeld asserts that the study “shows with true authority that Trump has violated a fourth qualification, by providing aid and comfort to an insurrection and enemies of the U.S. Constitution.”
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The study’s authors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, are both Federalist Society members who support “originalist” constitutional interpretations.
“Using this method of interpretation and historical research, Baude and Paulsen conclude that Trump has unequivocally run afoul of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment – the insurrection clause — by breaching his sworn oath of office to obey the Constitution.”
Sonnenfeld contends that this interpretation of the Constitution has been gaining traction, noting that conservative retired Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig and liberal leaning Harvard constitutional law expert Laurence H. Tribe recently co-authored an opinion piece in The Atlantic that articulates a similar argument.
Sonnenfeld writes that: “With remarkable agreement, these four constitutional law experts point out that Trump’s criminal prosecution is not even relevant to this disqualification. Citing the Supreme Court opinion in McCulloch v Maryland (1819) where Chief Justice John Marshall’s endorsement of the Constitution as a document intended to be read, understood, and applied by NON-lawyers, Luttig and Tribe, along with my colleague Anjani Jain of Yale encouraged me to author this essay.”
Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson joined the legal scholars in questioning Trump’s eligibility to serve as president on Sunday during appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
“I’m not even sure he’s qualified to be the next president of the United States. And so you can’t be asking us to support somebody that’s not perhaps even qualified under our Constitution. And I’m referring to the 14th Amendment, that a number of legal scholars said that he is disqualified because of his actions on January 6. … There would have to be a separate lawsuit that would be filed in which there would be a finding that the former president engaged in insurrection, and that would disqualify him. That’s one avenue. The other way would be that, if a specific state made that determination their own, then that would put the burden on someone else challenging that,” the former Arkansas governor said.
“Either way, it winds up in court for a specific finding. But I expect those lawsuits to be filed. I expect some states to take that action. But I think it’s a serious jeopardy for Donald Trump under our Constitution and not being qualified.”
