The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.
A Florida lawyer is suing Donald Trump in an attempt to disqualify his current run for president. Lawrence A. Caplan’s Thursday lawsuit claims that the ex-president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would make him ineligible to run again, thanks to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—a Civil War-era addition aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office. “Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case,” the lawsuit says, also citing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history. “Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
archive link to South Florida Sun Sentinel article: https://archive.ph/1BntD
Anyone who says that the election was rigged, and insists on it after being proven false over and over again, well… if that doesn’t prove malice, then I don’t know what will.
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The election was the most secure in our country’s history, that is a fact, but Trump planted seeds of election interference in 2016, when he won, so there was no denying what his strategy would be in 2020 (and he started on it early in 2020). There were definitely people that voted fraudulently, but it seems the majority of them, that I have seen reported on, were Republicans (voting for dead family members,voting twice, etc).
There were definitely people that voted fraudulently, but it seems the majority of them, that I have seen reported on, were Republicans (voting for dead family members,voting twice, etc).
Trump actually told people in North Carolina to vote twice.
What does your first thought about the “most secure election” even mean, and how do you prove it?
Not iBaz, but it’s the fact that every state that trumps legal team tried to sue had to double, triple, or further check the ballots has made it the “most secure election ever”. Basically the recounts that happened in Florida with Gore v Bush happend multiple times when trump attempted to dispute the election.
Weren’t most cases of election fraud in 2020’s election committed by Republicans?
Our governor’s son tried to vote for him even though he was 17. He was turned away and then came back later that day and tried to vote again…
It’s always projection
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Anecdotal data is wholly irrelevant when you have laws upholding the results and should have no bearing on convincing you of one or another thing.
Yes, we know that every election has some fraud. A lot of it is unintentional and a lot of it has been perpetrated by republican voters.
There were fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud found in the 2020 election. https://fortune.com/2021/12/14/trump-voter-fraud-investigation-biden-battleground-states-only-475-potential-voter-fraud-cases/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/21/politics/fact-check-republicans-voter-fraud-kirk-hartle/index.html
The ultra-conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has recorded just 1.438 proven instances of voter fraud going back to the 1990s.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraudThere has been an attack on our country by a sitting president to destabilize the people’s trust in the principle element of democracy. It has worked extremely effectively as nearly everyone will now question how valid an election really is - the kernel of doubt has been sown. Yet there was zero Z.E.R.O. reason to question the results of the 2020 election.
Trump and his allies had claimed there was voter fraud because the polls prior to the election indicated he was in the lead while the results of the election contradicted the polls. There was also the previously known and reported and anticipated timing of events where mail in ballots were counted in bulk at odd times. Everyone knew the votes would be counted in chunks and that one candidate would quickly pull ahead of the other. We even knew that a lot of republicans weren’t going to vote because it was already anticipated (for no reason) that the election would be rigged. As entirely fictional reports of voter fraud made their way through the zeitgeist, they grabbed onto these stories and presented them as fact with zero evidence to back them up (looking at you pillow guy). The cases were thrown out of court because the lawyers had absolutely no evidence to present to the judges.
Anecdotal stories are irrelevant when the sitting president of the United States is known to have fucked this country over. He’s an evil narcissist and anyone who believes him to be anything else is a fool participating in his intentional dismantling of our democracy for his personal gain and pleasure.
You shouldn’t be “thinking” there wasn’t enough fraud to sway the election. You should know this to be 100% factually true just as you know it to be 100% factually true that the moon is a sphere. What’s on or inside the moon is certainly up for debate ;-)
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I haven’t heard about that but I would say so, yes. Can you share these stories?
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These things don’t really seem to be equivalent. The idea in the 2020 election is that there were illegal votes cast and votes illegally purged and that allowed Biden to win. The idea in the 2016 election is more on misinformation on part of Russia and other sources. One is aledging illegal votes while the other is aledging misinformation. Those are pretty different things. And your first link is just about a few Democrats who are concerned about the security of voting machines and want to strengthen said security.
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Yeah people weren’t voting for Biden they were voting against trump. Biden is lame. I’m a democratic lol. I wish we both had better choices.
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Malice isn’t what needs to be proven. I’ll get voted down for saying this but it’s far from proven that trump “engaged in insurrection”.
He just did everything he could to encourage it and then watched on TV for over an hour giddy that it was happening, refusing to make a statement to call them off, when everyone he knew was begging him to. Yep totally innocent.
Stop it. I’m not defending Trump.
How do you think the legal system works? The prosecutor just says “c’mon your honor he totally did it” and the judge and jury just say “yep, totally”?
I think the legal system works exactly that way for poor/black people but for white people you buy your way out of jail.
Probably because that’s been demonstrated a seemingly infinite number of times
And yeah what you wrote was a textbook defense, no only in the legal sense but in an everyday sense too.
What about rebellion?
The term you are looking for is mens rea and from what we already know from the January 6th committee, Jack Smith has Trump dead to rights in that respect.
He also almost certainly has additional evidence that the committee didn’t get and that we don’t know about yet.
It’s not looking good for Trump which is exactly why he’s desperate to delay the trial until after the election in hopes that he wins and can make it all go away.
I’m surprised I even have to say this as I thought it was common knowledge regardless of one’s political persuasion.
Also, I didn’t downvote your comment.
He could just argue that he’s such an idiot he thought it was true despite the evidence.
…except for statements about Pence being too honest which kind of show he knows he was trying to seize power illegally.
To reach that kind of level of Idiocy would be unthinkable, knowing that you have the power of a U.S. president.
It would have been before. Now, I’m not entirely sure.
My point is that it’s not idiocy. To be idiocy, it has to be extreme idiocy, and this is isn’t it.
This guy is not surrounded by noobs. I’m sure he asked the right people whether the elections were legitimate, and he didn’t like the answer. Or he was just following a soviet-era book of rules handed over to him by who knows who. In either case, it’s not idiocy. It’s malice.
To be fair, it’s more selfishness than malice.
Does the reason change the crime?
Yes. Mens rea
In many other countries, insurrection gets you a nice brick wall and a blindfold. In America, you get to run for President (again).
Except the trial for the insurrection is just barely starting, not to mention all the other indictments. Yes, he wasn’t immediately locked up and should have been. Yes, he’s being treated differently because he’s rich, but it’s not like nothing is happening.
Not all countries are barbaric. Some just offer a long term stay in federal hospitality.
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Only if you can’t buy your way out.
For real. I’m really jealous that the courts in Brazil have already banned Bolsanaro from running for office for the next 10 years and Pakistan’s parliament ousted Khan for being ungenerous to the Ukraine conflict and then later the police arrested him for bribery. Those are supposedly developing countries but they are doing a better job of controlling their tyrannical despots than we are. Fortunately, like I keep saying, Trump has too much work cut out for him to effectively campaign with so many charges. He’s been in the lead, but I don’t know if he can stay that way.
Those are supposedly developing countries but they are doing a better job of controlling their tyrannical despots than we are.
That’s… Really interesting tbh.
You’re equating being a developed nation with the best thing ever, and expecting that if you’re the most developed nation you are also the best at treating social issues, and are therefore a bit confused when you see how other less developed countries can treat these issues better.
But when we get right down to it, development has no real reason to also mean “just” or “lawful”, right? I mean - “developed” means having a good economy, right? And when googling about it, the Human Development Index(HDI) comes up as well. But if we break it down, having money doesn’t mean you’re a better person. We can all think of countries with money but with a bad track record in human rights, like Saudi Arabia. And regarding the HDI, the US is 20th in that, right between South Korea (who are constantly faced with a nuclear threat along the border) and Israel (who are currently involved in stealing another countries’ land and constantly persecuting that country’s people). So what does developed mean in this context? Because it sure doesn’t mean these countries should be able to sleep at night because they have no problems.
But skipping all that, what’s weird to me is that this mentality of “we’ve got a lot of money therefore we have a great country and society and we only make good decisions” is so ingrained in you, that it actually surprises you when your country is surpassed by other countries in some aspects.
And it’s nothing to do with you, sorry if I made it seem like I’m attacking you or something, because I’m really not. For lack of a better way to describe this, to someone from the outside it looks like you’re a victim of a cult who is slowly starting to recognize that not everything the cult leader has been saying is actually true. I guess what I’m saying is - the American/capitalist propaganda machine does such a good job of pushing the “best country in the world” narrative, that it’s really interesting to see the ramifications it has on people’s way of thinking about the US.
or a one-way trip from a window on the 10th storey of a building all the way down to the ground.
It’s crazy that anyone would think he can and should be allowed to run for President again. The 14th Amendment is quite clear. And the man incited a violent insurrection to install himself as a dictator during what was a purely symbolic procedure. Trump lost, Biden won. Counting the electoral votes on 1/6 was a formality. There was no actual way for him to remain in office so he betrayed the nation by attempting to destroy democracy as we know it in this country. The only place he belongs in 2024 is ADX Florence.
The question is how to enforce the 14th amendment. This suit looks like a decent attempt at it, that doesn’t require Congress to act. (Congress has way too many Republicans right now, who will not enforce the 14th amendment against one of their own.)
The problem is that he did everything he could to use language to make it arguable that he was saying things that incite
Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history.
i find this very strange. it’s like they’re saying no one really knows what the amendment means because it hasn’t been used in a while. i’m not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn’t really mean much on this. i but i don’t see how it’s that vague (although it is a little vague). i also don’t see why the legal strength of an amendment should depend so much on how often it’s been used.
i’m not saying they’re wrong, i just don’t understand why it’s like that.
It’s not obvious what it means to “engage in insurrection” without case law defining what that means. What exactly does “insurrection” mean? What types of actions are required for this law to apply?
It’s much more of a gamble.
7 people were convicted already of seditious conspiracy, so either of the conspiracy charges connecting the former president with directing their actions would be pretty strong evidence.
Maybe. That’s what the courts will need to decide. And without prior precedent supporting your argument it’s not as strong as perhaps you think.
agreed - I think it needs a conviction to occur before anyone can argue this.
Except the conviction won’t be for insurrection, but for some other related offense so he’ll get away with it on this technicality.
The thing is, it’s pretty clear to basically everyone else. We’re supposee to have confidence in the people who interpret these things for us, but that’s pretty clearly gone too. I’m pretty frightened about where we’re headed because at some point people will get fed up that no one is getting real consequences and start handing them out themselves.
it’s pretty clear to basically everyone else
Is it? Are you sure?
It’s explained in great detail in the federalist papers.
“Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped”
The thing that isn’t clear to everyone all at once is which people are getting away with heinous things with zero consequences. What is clear is that a certain level of society has no consequences. Eventually one side or the other will get fed up and things will get really bad. Whether they’re going after the actual problems is another thing entirely, and the odds are probably better that they’ll be going after the wrong people.
Either way, I see the lack of consequences as the ultimate fuse in this powder keg. One of the main functions of government is to systematize and standardize consequences for unacceptable behavior, and we all agree to abide by rules we don’t necessarily agree to so that at least it’s somewhat consistently applied. In theory. But if government refuses to even give the appearance of doing that, people will take it into their own hands. Human nature has been the way it is way longer than our oldest institutions.
Well, it’s clear to everyone who isn’t a Trumper, but you need to remember that the law doesn’t always follow “it’s clear to everyone.” Due to various reasons, that law can hinge on technicalities and tests. So while we might agree that Trump engaged in insurrection, proving that he engaged in insurrection in court would be more difficult. Not impossible, mind you, but more difficult. And depending on the judge and evidence, Trump could be found, via a technicality, to have not engaged in insurrection as far as the law goes.
I don’t disagree. I think the real problem us that we’re supposed to trust the impartiality of the people making those technical legal determinations. It’s become obvious that’s a total fiction.
This is just the way of the law and the justice system. You’ve got to prove it.
that’s a good point and it helps me understand the problem a bit better. as someone outside the legal system though, it still seems like any sufficiently robust definition of insurrection should cover what he did on january 6th. but i guess having precise definitions is important in a legal setting and that problem still remains.
From what I’ve heard, the 14th amendment was written in a vague manner because the people passing it didn’t know what form a future insurrection would take. Would it be a full fledged Civil War Part 2? Would it be an uprising? Would it be a state government refusing to follow federal law and threatening to arrest anyone trying to enforce it?
Say they defined insurrection as “citizens taking up arms against America,” then many of the January 6th folks would be guilty, but would Trump? After all, he didn’t technically go down there with a weapon.
The vagueness keeps it open to any form of insurrection, but it also makes it hard to tell what counts as insurrection.
It doesn’t say convicted, it says “engaged in” and I believe it prevented former Confederates from taking office. So it seems like there’s a pretty big precedent backing it up.
And then there are other amendments like the 2nd Amendment with the puzzling and vague “well-regulated militia” language that never seems to be a problem…
Don’t ignore the fact that it was fought in the courts for decades to get where we are now.
Now we have an amendment that hasn’t been tested in the courts because no president has been enough of a corrupt, fascist, scumbag to require its use. So, it’s going to have to go through the courts.
I only hope someone in every state brings a case.
I only hope someone in every state brings a case.
That’s my hope as well. All it takes is for Trump to be removed from the ballot in one or two swing states to have him lose the election.
(Just to be clear to the studio audience, I’m not in favor of “rigging” the system on a technicality so Republicans lose / Democrats win. This is a matter of keeping a criminal defendant insurrectionist and mis-handler of highly classified information out of perhaps the most powerful position in the world.)
For my part, I’m done trying to be civil with the opposition. They don’t want to play fair, they don’t want democracy to survive, and they want to see the people I care about die.
The Republican party exists today to burn the world down. They have to be destroyed or we’re all lost.
Because half the people actively ignore that bit- including many judges.
It’s hard to see how this guy, or any other individual, has standing to sue over this. To sue someone you have to be able to prove that you personally were harmed in some way. And broad “this harms the electorate, and I’m part of the electorate” claims usually do not work.
If that is the case, that is absolutely broken.
Except when it comes time to strike down debt relief.
Yeah 😑
Part of it us the lack of caselawwhich is used fairly heavily for arguments in court
I mean, felons can’t even vote.
This is what I’ve been saying. He’s a felon! Over 90 felonies! He’s can’t run for election.
He hasn’t actually been convicted of any yet… technically not a felon until he’s sentenced, if I’m not mistaken
Felon upon conviction even before sentencing but otherwise correct.
I’m glad we have some educated people left in this world like you. Conservatives love worshiping law breaking facist pedophiles like Trump and backing Corporate conservative corporations that enable behavior like his. The Home Depot actively encouraged child molestation in the stores in Montana between their child trafficking high managers. I saw a store manager crack a bullwhip at one of his victims in Helena, while the HR and District manager laughed.
Caplan to receive death threats in 3….2….1……
So now we’ll have a supreme court ruling that what Trump did was not an insurrection. Great.
If it gets to the SCOTUS, and that’s a very big if, they can easily make a ruling favorable to Trump without ever touching the question of whether or not he engaged in insurrection. I’m not any kind of expert, but as a long time amateur SCOTUS-watcher I think that’s almost certainly what the conservative majority would do. You’d only see the question of insurrection mentioned in the dissenting opinion.
I’d love to see this asshat removed from any chance of getting into office. The GOP will replace him with someone just as awful as far as policies and fascist tendencies, but hopefully they’ll be less appealing to the general electorate.
Think: DeSADIST. It was funny to watch how people reacted to his performance in that “debate”. He’s so unpleasant and smarmy, if he were to win the primary, I think he’s flame out so hard in the general.
Trump is a cult of personality, once he goes, the next guy can be Trump In All But Name, and the fanbois won’t care
Very true. There are so many try-hards out there - people like Ronnie, Marge, and Qbert, and now Vivek, etc…I doubt that little d’s base will fall quite as hard for any of them.
Sounds like someone similar to Trump does not want to run against him.
I think a lot of people would just be happy to see Trump cut out of the race for good. There will be no majority for DeSantis, because the Trump disciples will shun him, cutting down any possible Non-Trump REP candidate.
In that scenario I imagine there would be a large number of maga goons who would still write in Trumps name. I can also see people angrily crossing out Bidens name or otherwise defacing their ballot, spoiling their vote.
This next election is going to be an absolute shit show.
If it’s true then it should be fine for non fascists.
Well, let them. It just invalidates their vote. I am more afraid of MAGA brains trying to vote with their guns instead.
defacing their ballot, spoiling their vote.
That probably will not be counted in favour of any candidate.
Yes, it is referred to as vote spoiling.
It is equal to not going to election station in first place.*
*unless there is quorum requirement
Is this the Florida Man redemption arc?
Seems more like a preemptive strike in an attempt to discredit the claim early in a friendly district.
Seems more like a preemptive strike in an attempt to discredit the claim early in a friendly district.
That actually makes sense. It’s plausible that it is strategic preemptive judge shopping. Success would create a protective precedent from the findings of a biased court. My reasoning is simple, if lots of the participants of the riot were charged with insurrection, then it logically follows that the person benefiting the most from the insurrection is likely guilty of it as well. The burden of proof should not be enormous to reach the top tier of that insurrection, because of public statements and suspicious neglect of duty to quietly support the effort. Things like wanting to remove magnetic weapon detectors to invite in armed insurrectionists should be a big clue.
A Florida Man with a functioning brain.
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I would think anyone who is an American citizen has standing to do this. The overturning of a fair election and the destruction of the peaceful transfer of power has horrible consequences for us all.
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I’m not a lawyer (yet) as I haven’t taken the bar exam, but I remember learning this in law school.
I can’t find the original court filing that all these news articles are reporting, but presumably, this is a special kind of suit seeking a “declaratory judgment” - a suit asking the court to prevent a harm before it happens.
Cornell Law School discusses it in a somewhat lengthy read but put “simply”, for standing in this kind of case, the court would want to see:
a concrete controversy (as opposed to a hypothetical one, e.g. you can’t seek a declaratory judgment “in case my neighbor decides to hit me”),
between adverse parties (some random citizen can’t sue you for breaking a promise you made to your grandma),
that is ripe (where enough has already happened that a decision right now wouldn’t require much speculation),
not moot (has to be able to affect the current case, for example, declaratory judgment isn’t appropriate to determine “should he have done that?”), and
the court’s decision is needed to prevent imminent harm (has to be relatively certain that a party would be adversely affected if the court doesn’t prevent it from happening).
Here there could be issues of ripeness: the court might not want to act on the mere possibility that Trump will be found guilty of insurrection etc. Courts don’t like to tell people what they can and can’t do unless a real situation makes it necessary, otherwise the court would risk encroaching on powers that belong to the other branches of government.
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Thank you for bringing rigour and structure to the discussion as opposed to sheer speculation. Take my upvote pretty please.
That case is also an example of this working. The case in front of the Supreme Court had no standing since is was fake plaintiffs.
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The Supreme Court doesn’t think separation of church and state is worth preserving and will do every it can to dismantle it. That is why we are getting state funded religious schools and prayer is creeping back in.
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You do understand the voucher thing is an attempt to remove funding from public education right ?
the supreme court doesn’t seem to care about standing anymore. they literally rewrote the rules to toss student loan forgiveness.
Standing could be as simple as “it harms the American people to allow him to run.” The lawyer doesn’t have to be directly injured, since class action lawsuits are brought on behalf of entire groups all the time.
Not that it’s a slam dunk reason, but I would hope and think the lawyer in question knows that they have to prove some amount of standing.
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ETA: I am still shocked you can be a felon and still run for and be president. That is something new I learned.
Many of our laws are based on people being at bare minimum reasonable. Election laws especially are written so that the electorate can decide.
Should a federal conviction for having marijuana plants prevent someone from running for office? Or should the citizens be able to make that decision when voting?
The problem is that because many of our laws lack specificity some modern assholes are attempting to use those loopholes and trying to politicize absolutely everything. Combined with the fact that many people no longer have the time to properly research things on their own (assuming they even have proper critical thinking education now), a decent segment of the population no longer is getting unbiased or minimally biased factual information from “news” sources due to the repeal of laws requiring that over the decades.
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Yep. Basically the 14th is the quickest path to disallowing his run. But he can get multiple life sentences for murdering a million people and still run.
No comment on this lawyer’s standing, but class action suit’s standing, claim that the class members have been injured in the same or similar ways as the lead plaintiff. The lead plaintiff is suing for a direct injury.
The Supreme Court, under these lunatic Republicans, have shown that standing is whatever they want it to be.
However, there are election officials in every state, and perhaps every county, that determine which candidates are qualified to appear on a ballot. Each of them has not just the right, but the DUTY to disqualify Trump for his role in the insurrection.
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Standing doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. In the same year we had an atheist being told that they couldn’t get upset about prayers to Jesus in a government meeting of his town that was open to the public and that a website design company can refuse to be involved in a gay marriage despite having no gay clients.
On one side we have someone upset about an government eastablishment of a church in their local government on the other we have a hypothetical.
Who do you think would have standing?
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The reason that there isn’t a national law that codified Row v Wade is REPUBLICAN OBSTRUCTION.
The system is set up to make it extremely difficult to pass anything, and the Republican party has enforced mandatory party unity on abortion and gun rights for the last four decades.
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I don’t think it will even get as far as standing.
The difference between Trump and the other guy removed from office because of 1/6:
Is that that guy had actually been convicted. Hasn’t happened for Trump… yet.
My expectation would be that because Trump’s case has not yet been adjudicated, he still has the premise of innocent until proven guilty, and until such time, he’s still qualified.
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Well according to the theory of the case the 14th amendment is self-executing, so it doesn’t require that Trump be convicted. It remains to be seen how well that stands up in court however.
The trick is the language of the 14th:
Forbids anyone from holding office who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
What does “shall have engaged” mean? Who decides if they actually engaged or not? This is why we need a court decision, as we had in the other guy who was removed. He was convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, he got removed from office.
Trump and his ilk are going to argue that they were the legitimate rulers, that the rebellion was AGAINST THEM. That’s why we can’t just kick them out without a ruling.
You may be right, I am not a lawyer either, but regardless, I would be very hesitant to accept anything said about it here. Let’s just say that the “Lemmy Bar Association” doesn’t exactly have a great record with legal analysis.
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Wouldn’t he need to be convicted first before this suit has a chance of winning?
Almost certainly, or else the suit could be dismissed on Double Jeopardy grounds. Even then, he would probably just appeal to the Supreme Court and get them to make up some reason to rule in his favor.
he would probably just appeal to the Supreme Court and get them to make up some reason to rule in his favor.
This would undoubtedly become the pinnacle of the Roberts Court being on the wrong side of history, though maybe they’d find a way to top that…
The 14th Amendment is consider to be “self-executing” and public election officials can disqualify candidates when presented with a plausible argument.
Show me… potato salad!
