Two nonprofit groups — including the group that challenged several GOP House members’ eligibility to serve because of their support for the January 6 attack on the Capitol — are looking to use the same provision of the US Constitution to keep Donald Trump off the ballot next year.
Free Speech for People and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are preparing to ask courts to disqualify the twice-impeached, indicted ex-president from appearing on ballots in multiple states because his actions before and during the riot amount to support for “insurrection” against the United States.
Mr Trump’s support for the attack, the groups say, would fall under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits any “officer of the United States” who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the country — after previously taking an oath to support the Constitution — from serving in any federal office.
In the run-up to the 2022 midterm election, Free Speech for People brought challenges under Section 3 against two GOP candidates, then-North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The group’s case against Mr Cawthorn was declared moot after the now-former congressman lost his primary, and the challenge to Ms Greene was unsuccessful because a Georgia judge found that her actions on January 6, just three days after she was sworn in to the House, did not meet the definition of an insurrection.
But Ron Fein, the group’s legal director and the lead attorney in those two prior cases, told The Washington Post that the strategy could bear fruit against Mr Trump because of the massive amount of evidence against him that was assembled by the House January 6 committee last year.
“Our goals are to force Donald Trump to answer questions under oath about his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and to obtain court decisions holding that he is disqualified from public office and excluding him from the ballot,” Mr Fein said in a statement.
Crew, the other group looking to challenge Mr Trump’s eligibility to serve, has successfully sought to disqualify one Republican elected official under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Last year, a New Mexico judge found Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin — a convicted January 6 rioter — ineligible to serve because of his actions at the Capitol on January 6.
In a ruling removing Griffin from office, Judge Francis Matthew found Griffin had “engaged in insurrection” and “became constitutionally disqualified from federal and state office and forfeited his current office as an Otero County Commissioner” as of the day of the Capitol attack.
He also found that Griffin, who gained a measure of prominence in right-wing circles as the founder of Cowboys for Trump, ”aided the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence”.
“By joining the mob and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds, Mr. Griffin contributed to delaying Congress's election-certification proceedings,” the judge said.
Donald Sherman, Crew’s chief counsel, told the Post that the group was planning “a strategy designed to enforce the Constitution to bar Trump from serving as president”.
“We have had two major insurrections in this country. One was the Civil War, which gave rise to Section 3. And one was [January 6],” he said.
