Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin is revealing his plan to prevent former President Trump from returning to the White House. The former White House impeachment manager suggested the 14th Amendment provision preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” could be used to bar Trump from office.
Rep. Raskin also argued that the Amendment could also be used against several Republican members of Congress who were involved in a rally on Jan. 6.
The Washington Examiner reports:
“If they’re people who did participate in insurrection, or rebellion, they are constitutionally barred from holding federal or state office again,” Raskin, a member of the House select committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, told reporters last week.
But Raskin, previously a tenured constitutional law professor at American University, said it is an open question whether that section of the 14th Amendment is “self-executing” and can “operate in itself” without requiring a previous conviction.
“There’s also another view out there that, for example, Donald Trump has already been determined to have participated in insurrection and rebellion by virtue of his impeachment by the House by majority vote, and then the determination by 57 senators that he incited violent insurrection against the union,” said Raskin, who was a House impeachment manager. Although Trump “wasn’t convicted for the purposes of impeachment, it could be argued that a majority has established as a legislative fact that he participated in insurrection or rebellion.”
Raskin went through the “fascinating history” of the amendment, added after the Civil War, saying it was designed to “focus on the inner core of the most culpable people” rather than broadly disenfranchise anyone who participated in insurrection or rebellion by barring them from ever voting again. “The language is mandatory: shall not.”
Trump isn’t the only one critics are hoping to keep out of office. A coalition of North Carolina voters is also trying to keep Rep. Madison Cawthorne.
