While most challenges to former President Donald Trump’s eligibility as a candidate under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment have taken place in courts, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is set this week to make a decision herself. Attorneys for President Trump on Wednesday sent a letter requesting that she disqualify herself from the issue because she has already made public statements calling the events of Jan. 6, 2021, an “insurrection.”
“President Trump requests that the Secretary disqualify herself from this matter because she has already concluded that President Trump engaged in insurrection—a determination that she made well before the submission of evidence or argument in this current matter. Because the Secretary has exhibited a personal bias in this matter, she should disqualify herself from further proceedings,” President Trump’s attorneys wrote.
The letter, sent to Ms. Bellows’s office, cites several of her posts on Twitter, now X.
“The Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. Today 57 Senators, including [Angus] King [(I-Maine)] & [Susan] Collins [(R-Maine)], found Trump guilty. That’s short of impeachment but nevertheless an indictment. The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed,” she wrote on Feb. 13, 2021.
In a separate post that day, Ms. Bellows expressed disappointment that President Trump was not impeached.
“Not saying not disappointed. He should have been impeached. But history will not treat him or those who voted against impeachment kindly,” she posted, according to the letter.
Because Ms. Bellows has already judged the events of Jan. 6, 2021, an insurrection, attorneys for President Trump are arguing she has already passed judgment on one of the core assertions in these challenges to his eligibility.
“President Trump deserves a fair and impartial hearing,” his attorneys argued.
Eligibility Challenges
The 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War to grant citizenship and equal rights to all persons born and naturalized in the United States. It included a third section meant to prevent officers who abandoned their posts to join the Confederacy from taking office again without a two-thirds vote by Congress. It states that officers who have taken an oath and later engaged in “insurrections” or “rebellions” cannot hold office without two-thirds of Congress voting to remove the “disability.” Yet the text names several offices without including the “president” or “vice president,” causing different interpretations as to President Trump’s eligibility even among judges who rule Jan. 6 an “insurrection.”This untested legal theory was introduced shortly after Jan. 6, with anti-Trump activists sending letters to election officials in all 50 states. But it was only a few months ago that the theory gained traction, with legal experts opining in the media and activist groups bringing lawsuits in several states. The vast majority of these petitions were brought by a longshot Republican candidate who sued in federal court and later voluntarily dismissed almost half his cases. The rest were brought by local voters in state courts, some represented by large, national advocacy groups.
While the challenges to President Trump’s eligibility are near identical—that he “engaged” in an “insurrection” through his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and is thus ineligible as a candidate for office—judges’ reasons for dismissing cases in several levels of court have been many and varied.
Some cases have been dismissed for lack of standing, others for lack of jurisdiction with little explanation. In Michigan, Court of Claims Judge James Redford issued the most extensive dismissal to date, addressing all of the legal issues that were debated over in a hearing. The Michigan Appeals Court and Michigan Supreme Court both upheld the ruling.
Besides Maine, Colorado is the only other state to have proceeded with one of these cases to the point of hearing arguments on the issue of insurrection. After a weeklong trial that included whether Jan. 6 constituted an “insurrection,” a Colorado district court judge ruled that it did, but that Section 3 did not apply to presidents. The Colorado Supreme Court overturned the ruling in part, ordering the state secretary to remove President Trump from the ballot but staying its own order until Jan. 4, just one day before the deadline to certify the ballots.
The stay is in anticipation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the order explained. If the Supreme Court does not reject an appeal by Jan. 4, or no appeal is made by Jan. 4, the secretary is ordered to remove President Trump from the Colorado primary ballot.
Both President Trump and the Colorado GOP, intervenors with standing in the case, have announced they will petition the high court before Jan. 4, and the Colorado GOP indicated it would switch to a caucus format if the order is not overturned. Some legal experts are expecting a Supreme Court ruling to bring a definitive end to 14th Amendment challenges.
