Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu on Saturday voiced support for blocking Donald Trump from seeking elected office using the 14th Amendment, and put forward some ways in which it could be done.
The former president is currently facing four criminal indictments, two at the state level and two federal, with a total of over 90 criminal charges. The two most recent indictments, from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney's office, respectively, relate to his alleged attempts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and has insisted that the investigations against him are politically motivated. However, legal experts and other observers have called the cases against him legitimate and damning.
Despite that avalanche of criminal charges, Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, by a wide margin, as he seeks to retake the White House. Various polls have indicated that the charges have not had much impact on his support from GOP voters, with some of the indictments giving him a bump in the polls.
In the face of Trump's strong polling, a growing chorus of legal experts have begun to advocate strongly for the use of the 14th Amendment to bar the former president from seeking political office. The amendment, introduced in the wake of the Civil War and aimed at former Confederates, contains a "Disqualification Clause," which bars anyone who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States while holding elected office from seeking such an office again.
In a column for The Daily Beast, Wu, a legal analyst who served as counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration, wrote that the clause, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, "fits Donald J. Trump like a glove," and cited a comment from political podcaster Allison Gill, who asked if the clause "wasn't designed for [Trump], who was it designed for?"
"The plain language of [the clause] obviously encompasses Trump's actions to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election," Wu wrote. "These actions include but are not limited to asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find additional votes for him, conspiring to put forth slates of unelected 'fake' electors for the electoral college, and his call for 'wild' protests on Jan. 6 that led to the attack on the Capitol."
Wu wrote further, countering arguments from some critics who have said that invoking the clause would require Trump to be criminally convicted on charges related to "insurrection or rebellion." The former prosecutor called this stance "fictitious" and laid out some ways that it might be enforced without any legal proceedings.
"In fact, there exist a multitude of ways to enforce the disqualification of Trump," Wu continued. "For starters, secretaries of state could simply decide he cannot be on the ballot. Secondly, citizens and states could challenge his presence on the ballot through the courts. There has already been a recent case involving removal of a Jan. 6 rioter from their position on a New Mexico state commission."
Wu did note, however, that these methods would face legal challenges, ones that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. He also argued, however, that the conservative majority there might not necessarily rule in Trump's favor.
In a statement provided to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Trump on Saturday dismissed these arguments as an "absurd conspiracy theory," with no legal standing.
"Joe Biden and the Democrats are scared to death because they see the polls showing President Trump winning in the general election," the statement read. "That's why they are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory. The lawyers who are pushing this political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and D.C. There is no legal basis for this effort except in the minds of those who are pushing it."
Meanwhile, lawyer and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley has been amongst the more prominent critics of the theory put forward by Wu and others, calling the possibility an "urban legend" and arguing that the process would fall apart on the question of whether or not Trump's effort actually constituted "insurrection or rebellion."
In addition, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg previously told Newsweek that the former president "has not been charged with insurrection or seditious conspiracy, so I don't think the 14th Amendment will be used to keep him out of office. It will be up to the voters to do that."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
