Legal Expert Predicts Challenges to Trump’s ‘Right to Appear’ on The Ballot Based on Conservative Interpretation of 14th Amendment

CNN’s Jim Acosta spoke with legal analyst Norm Eisen over the weekend regarding new conservative legal scholarship that makes the case Trump could and should be constitutionally barred from running for elected office.

“And yesterday I had a chance to talk to two constitutional scholars. Perhaps you’ve seen some of this. And they argue that because of Trump’s actions to overturn the 2020 election, that he is already disqualified from being president again under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Let’s listen to this and talk about on the other side,” Acosta said setting up a clip.

“Simply could not be any clearer. It is unmistakable in its application to the former president. The only thing that was not known until Professors Baude and Paulson did their scholarly work is whether this was the actual meaning under the original understanding of the Constitution,” argued Judge Michael Luttig, a prominent figure in conservative legal circles.

Acosta continued, “Judge Luttig and Professor Laurence Tribe there. I mean, they’re world-renowned constitutional experts when they talk, people listen when you talk people listen Norm. What’s your sense of it?”

“Professor Tribe and Judge Luttig are friends and colleagues of mine. There’s been so much trauma for the nation since January 6th on, but how fantastic that you have one of the preeminent liberal legal scholars and one of the preeminent conservative ones coming together,” Eisen replied, adding:

And here I agree with them. The 14th of the Amendment of the Constitution, Section three says that you’re not eligible to hold office in the United States if you commit insurrection or you give aid and comfort to insurrectionists. And there is such powerful evidence adduced by the January 6th Committee out in plain sight of that proposition.

And now we have these two conservative scholars who published a very important law review article Bawd and Paulson saying that’s what the founders and framers of the country believed as well. So I think we’re going to see very substantial legal challenges to Donald Trump’s right to appear on an election ballot.

Professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two conservative members of the Federalist Society, sparked this debate in mid-August with when they published a law review article titled, “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.”
In the article, they argue that based on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, Trump’s disqualification from running again for office is automatic as it was after the Civil War to keep former Confederate soldiers and officeholders out of government.

Watch the full clip above via CNN.