Noteworthy News

[Fireball]

Maine's top election official rules Trump ineligible for 2024 primary ballot (msn.com)

CAMDEN, Maine — Maine’s top election official ruled Thursday that Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot next year, fueling a national effort to disqualify the former president over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, follows a bombshell Colorado Supreme Court ruling last week that concluded the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Trump from serving in office again due to his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Hold on.

Are you saying his actions have consequences??

Ask anyone but him and his sycophants.

[brewer]

Hold on.

Are you saying his actions have consequences??

Ask anyone but him and his sycophants psychophants.

FTFY

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

California has declined to remove Trump from the primary ballot.

Boru

[Nanny]

I find the orange idiot insufferable, but Maine got this dead wrong. Trump is technically not running for president at the moment. He's running to be his party's nominee for president. A politician from the other party decided Republicans can't nominate who they choose. Bad optics for sure, but this is doomed to failure under judicial review.

Trump has not been adjudicated to have taken part in an insurrection. He is charged, and with that come a presumption of innocence, even for the cheeto.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I find the orange idiot insufferable, but Maine got this dead wrong. Trump is technically not running for president at the moment. He's running to be his party's nominee for president. A politician from the other party decided Republicans can't nominate who they choose. Bad optics for sure, but this is doomed to failure under judicial review.

Trump has not been adjudicated to have taken part in an insurrection. He is charged, and with that come a presumption of innocence, even for the cheeto.

According to some interpretations of the relevant clause, adjudication isn’t necessary. It’s - constitutionally - enough to have ‘…engaged in insurrection or rebellion…’.

Any removing him from the primary ballots makes a good deal of legal and political sense. If he stays on the ballot and crushes it in the primary, and is then removed from the general, it gives him ammunition about ‘ignoring the will of the voters’, blah blah blah.

Boru

[Mister Agenda]

It may be important to note that Colorado has verbiage in its constitution about candidates being qualified, a state that does not have that wording in its constitution may not have as strong a case to remove him from the primary.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I find the orange idiot insufferable, but Maine got this dead wrong. Trump is technically not running for president at the moment. He's running to be his party's nominee for president. A politician from the other party decided Republicans can't nominate who they choose. Bad optics for sure, but this is doomed to failure under judicial review.

Trump has not been adjudicated to have taken part in an insurrection. He is charged, and with that come a presumption of innocence, even for the cheeto.

According to some interpretations of the relevant clause, adjudication isn’t necessary. It’s - constitutionally - enough to have ‘…engaged in insurrection or rebellion…’.

Any removing him from the primary ballots makes a good deal of legal and political sense. If he stays on the ballot and crushes it in the primary, and is then removed from the general, it gives him ammunition about ‘ignoring the will of the voters’, blah blah blah.

Boru

These are all good points, and it really can be argued either way. I think a criminal conviction will be a much stronger basis than a civil finding (which is what Colorado's judgement is) because of the stricter evidentiary standard along with the fact that it would likely be settled by jury vote. For those reasons it would also be harder to attain. Absent that, his followers will be able to whine that it wasn't proven (and of course they'll likely do that anyway).

Another issue is that Constitutionally, state legislatures have the power to regulate all elections inside that state (subject to Congressional oversight). The Constitution, notably, makes no mention of oversight by SCOTUS. This opens the possibility, slim though it may be, that the Roberts Court finds itself lacking standing to adjudicate the matter.

[Angrboda]

According to some interpretations of the relevant clause, adjudication isn’t necessary. It’s - constitutionally - enough to have ‘…engaged in insurrection or rebellion…’.

Any removing him from the primary ballots makes a good deal of legal and political sense. If he stays on the ballot and crushes it in the primary, and is then removed from the general, it gives him ammunition about ‘ignoring the will of the voters’, blah blah blah.

Boru

These are all good points, and it really can be argued either way. I think a criminal conviction will be a much stronger basis than a civil finding (which is what Colorado's judgement is) because of the stricter evidentiary standard along with the fact that it would likely be settled by jury vote. For those reasons it would also be harder to attain. Absent that, his followers will be able to whine that it wasn't proven (and of course they'll likely do that anyway).

Another issue is that Constitutionally, state legislatures have the  power to regulate all elections inside that state (subject to Congressional oversight). The Constitution, notably, makes no mention of oversight by SCOTUS. This opens the possibility, slim though it may be, that the Roberts Court finds itself lacking standing to adjudicate the matter.

The Roberts court has had no difficulty creating standing out of whole cloth. I doubt this would be different.

[Angrboda]

Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.

So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.

The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.

The new details provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the chaotic last-minute effort to keep Donald Trump in office. The fake electors scheme features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment against the former president, and some of the officials who were involved have spoken to Smith’s investigators.

The emails and recordings also indicate that a top Trump campaign lawyer was part of 11th-hour discussions about delivering the fake elector certificates to Pence, potentially undercutting his testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6 that he had passed off responsibility and didn’t want to put the former vice president in a difficult spot.

These details largely come from pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was an architect of the fake electors plot and is now a key cooperator in several state probes into the scheme. Chesebro pleaded guilty in October to a felony conspiracy charge in Georgia in connection with the electors’ plan, and has met with prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, who are investigating the sham GOP electors in their own states.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/...index.html

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Roberts court has had no difficulty creating standing out of whole cloth.  I doubt this would be different.

I don't think they're that predictable.