By now, most of us have seen how Trump and his minions inside and outside the West Wing tried to pressure the Justice Department into overturning his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden. So we now have the president of the United States attempting to use the power of his office, and the power of the federal government, to steal a second term.
To my mind, it is now time to invoke the one remedy we have left to permanently remove Trump from our politics. It is time to permanently disqualify him via the 14th Amendment.
Specifically, it is time to use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Let’s review:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, 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.
While precedent indicates that simple majorities in both chambers would be enough to disqualify him, given the stakes such a vote would have to have a fair amount of Republican support. As I noted after Trump was acquitted, there seemed to be modest Republican support in the House for a 14th Amendment solution. At least eight Republican senators hinted they would have at least considered convicting Trump if he had still been in office, with a ninth conceding that the 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to permanently disqualify Trump from ever holding office again.
However, until today, I believed that it might be too soon to make such a move. After all, with separate criminal investigations in New York and Georgia very much underway, I initially thought invoking the 14th Amendment had the potential to prejudice them.
But that calculus changed when the House Oversight Committee released those emails. They spell out how Trump tried to turn the DOJ into an arm of his effort to peddle his Big Lie, even though there was absolutely no evidence to support it. They portray the most ham-handed abuse of power in recent memory. Reading them, one can be pardoned for thinking you’re seeing something that should be expected in Russia, Belarus, Cuba or Venezuela. The president of the United States attempted to use the power of his office, and the power of the federal government, to attack the most sacred trusts in our democracy—the integrity of our elections, and the peaceful transition of power.
What makes it even more egregious in my mind is that there is strong circumstantial evidence that Trump was doing so when he damned well KNEW that he lost. Remember, he knew as early as Nov. 7-8 that his only shot at reversing Biden’s lead involved the legal and political equivalent of a rain dance—winning legal challenges to Wisconsin’s count and running the table in Arizona and Georgia. Even then, he was told, he only had a 5-10% chance of pulling it off. And he knew as early as Nov. 12 that it was mathematically impossible for him to win enough court challenges to get to 270.
This alone proved that the insurrection was well underway long before Jan. 6. We weren’t just talking about the line between protected and non-protected speech. We were talking about action. And the emails released Tuesday put that beyond any doubt.
When a president willfully attacks the foundations of democracy, it is incumbent upon us to use every resource necessary to defend it, and ensure that it is never allowed to happen again. To my mind, it is time for the 14th Amendment.