Judge J. Michael Luttig and Lawrence Tribe explained on Saturday morning why they think that Trump’s actions on 1/6 have automatically disqualified him from the 2024 election.
Judge Luttig explained to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, “Until the scholarship by two professors, I was not aware of the self-executing feature of section three. I’m sure Professor Tribe was. He’s written about the disqualification clause his whole life. But this is a momentous, significance itself. Because neither Congress nor Congress through impeachment, nor a judicial order, nor the results of a criminal conviction are needed. As of this moment, under the professors’ reading of section three, and of my reading and Professor Tribe’s, the former president is disqualified from holding the office of the presidency in 2024.”
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Luttig and Tribe also wrote in The Atlantic, “The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is, therefore, ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause.”
If the disqualification clause is automatic, it will be up to secretaries of state to not put Trump on the presidential ballot, and then the process will move to the courts. Under the argument backed by a growing number of constitutional experts, the question is not if Trump should be disqualified from the ballot.
Trump already is disqualified.
The question is will the constitution be enforced to keep Trump off of the ballot?
