The drive reflects concern among Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans that, despite multiple investigations and evidence of wrongdoing, the former president may make a comeback.
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this article
Former President Donald J. Trump is the widely presumed front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
WASHINGTON — Democrats and liberal groups, determined to find a way to bar former President Donald J. Trump from returning to office, are preparing a variety of ways to disqualify him, including drafting new legislation and readying a flurry of lawsuits seeking to use an obscure clause in the Constitution to brand him an insurrectionist.
The plans amount to an extraordinarily long-shot effort to accomplish what multiple investigations of Mr. Trump have failed to do: foreclose any chance that the former president could regain power, whether voters want him to or not. They reflect the growing concern among Democrats and liberal activists seeking to find a way to end the political careers of the former president and the officials who helped him try to cling to the presidency, including through several new and in some cases arcane strategies.
Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans have grown fearful that Merrick B. Garland, the attorney general, will not pursue criminal action against Mr. Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Even if Mr. Trump were indicted and convicted of a crime, there is no law barring even an imprisoned felon from becoming president.
At the same time, Mr. Trump is the widely presumed front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, whose popularity with his party’s base appears undiminished by the high-profile set of House hearings this year revealing the breadth of his efforts to upend a democratic election.
Some of the efforts to block his return are taking place in the states where the nonprofit organization Free Speech For People and other groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have been filing lawsuits against lawmakers who were involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 defeat.
The push gained momentum this week when a judge in New Mexico removed Couy Griffin from his post as commissioner of New Mexico’s Otero County, branding him an insurrectionist for his participation in the Jan. 6 riot and for helping to spread the election lies that inspired it. The judge’s action against Mr. Griffin, the founder of Cowboys for Trump who was convicted earlier this year of trespassing when he breached barricades outside the Capitol during the attack, was the first time in more than a century that a public official has been barred from serving under the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the nonpartisan watchdog organization that filed suit against Mr. Griffin, said the judge’s ruling sent a clear message that the events of Jan. 6 qualified as an insurrection and that those involved in the “planning, mobilization and incitement” of the violence that day, including Mr. Trump, could be barred from office.
He said his group was taking a “hard look” at how to pursue such challenges against the former president.
“There is a tremendous body of evidence about Donald Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the election and inciting the attack of Jan. 6,” Mr. Bookbinder said. “It seems like there’s a serious case to be made that it could have application to Donald Trump.”
Progressive activists have also been meeting with secretaries of state and sending letters to officials who oversee elections to try to persuade them to use their authority to keep anyone involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol off the ballot in 2024. Election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have already received letters urging them to block Mr. Trump from the ballot.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Card 1 of 9
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out a comprehensive narrative of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far from eight public hearings:
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.
And there is work underway on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have drafted legislation aimed at enforcing the 14th Amendment’s ban.
“If he does choose to run for office, we stand ready to challenge his eligibility under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in multiple states,” Ron Fein, a lawyer for Free Speech For People, which is planning a legal offensive, said of Mr. Trump. “It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that he is disqualified from public office under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.”
A year and a half after Mr. Trump left office, Democrats continue to see him as a grave danger to the country and — even after a special counsel investigation, two impeachments, a large electoral victory in 2020 and a revelatory congressional inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election — many are increasingly concerned that he could return to power.
How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
Learn more about our process.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers are aware that they could have to overcome such challenges to keep him on the ballot in multiple states, according to people with knowledge of their talks. They have been closely watching the state-level lawsuits against other public officials.
The little-discussed third section of the 14th Amendment, adopted during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy, declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Reconstruction-era federal prosecutors brought civil actions in court to oust officials linked to the Confederacy, and Congress in some cases refused to seat members, according to the Congressional Research Service. But before Mr. Griffin’s ouster this week, the last time the amendment was enforced was in 1919, when Congress rejected a socialist member who was accused of giving aid and comfort to Germany during World War I.
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, liberal groups have tried without success to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify a slew of lawmakers, including Arizona’s Republican Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, and Mark Finchem, a state representative who is running for secretary of state with Mr. Trump’s endorsement. They have also tried and failed to use the constitutional clause to bar Senator Ron Johnson and Representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, all Wisconsin Republicans; Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia; and Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina.
An appeals court ruled in May that participants in an insurrection against the government could be barred from holding office, but the target of that case, Mr. Cawthorn, had already lost his primary, rendering the matter essentially moot.
In the challenge to the candidacy of Ms. Greene, a judge adopted the plaintiffs’ definition that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was an insurrection but said that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Ms. Greene engaged in it.
Other suits were dismissed on procedural grounds.
The strategy worked in the case of Mr. Griffin, but his was a far easier one to win than a potential challenge to Mr. Trump or any of his associates because the New Mexico official was physically present at the riot on Jan. 6.
In recent weeks, some high-profile Democrats in Congress have filed legislation that would make it easier for such suits to be successful against Mr. Trump and other politicians involved in the events of Jan. 6, although it has no chance of advancing.
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, have filed legislation that would declare the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol an insurrection and authorize the attorney general to investigate and bring civil action against anyone suspected of violating their oaths of office. The bill would also authorize any citizen to file a civil action to disqualify an officeholder.
Mr. Raskin said he was discussing with other members of the Jan. 6 committee whether to include the measure among the panel’s recommendations — along with overhauls of the Electoral Count Act and other potential changes — which are expected to garner significant attention when they are released in the coming weeks.
“This is a matter of constitutional magnitude,” Mr. Raskin said. “As the committee moves into the final phases of our investigation and our recommendations, I would hope this would be something that we would consider.”
Should the committee endorse the move, it could add momentum for the legislation to move forward in Congress, though it would all but certainly face an insurmountable hurdle in the Senate, where Republicans could filibuster it. But even if the bill dies, its authors regard it as a road map for Congress to enforce the constitutional provisions in the future.
After the attack on the Capitol, legal scholars began scouring the federal code to find ways of imposing consequences for those involved. The rioters who committed violent acts proved easy to charge and convict, producing hundreds of cases. Less clear was what could be done about the politicians whose actions led to the riot, but who did not commit violence themselves.
Since late last year, the House committee appeared to be banking on a strategy of unearthing as much evidence as possible against Mr. Trump, reasoning that doing so would pressure the Justice Department to prosecute the former president.
In December, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, read aloud the criminal statutes she contended Mr. Trump had broken. In March, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Trump and the conservative lawyer John Eastman, who helped him craft a legal theory to justify overturning the election, likely acted unlawfully by obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.
Throughout its public hearings in June and July, the committee suggested an array of other potential grounds for prosecuting Mr. Trump, including a scheme to put forward false pro-Trump electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., fund-raising based on the lie of a stolen election and interference with committee witnesses.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Source: nytimes.com
