A Colorado judge has rejected an attempt to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary ballot based on the claim that he is constitutionally barred from office because of the January 6 insurrection.
She, actually. And no, her interpretation was that the office of president not being listed in the opening sentence of that clause means that the “framers” specifically wanted to exclude it. Here’s the sentence in question:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
The language says: “elector of President and Vice-President”, but it does not explicitly specify “President” or “Vice President”. Therefore, she ruled that though he is a traitor, he can’t be barred from running for office again.
Seems pretty inclusive to me, too. I’m right there with you. But the judge didn’t ask either of us, or apparently anybody who can read for their opinion, so we got this bullshit instead.
Edit: BTW - this isn’t just my flawed interpretation of the judge’s decision. It’s basically a summary of paragraph 313 of her ruling:
Here, after considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is
persuaded that “officers of the United States” did not include the President of the United
States. While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments on both sides, the
Court holds that the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the
Amendment applies combined with the fact that Section Three specifies that the
disqualifying oath is one to “support” the Constitution whereas the Presidential oath is
to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, it appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who
had only taken the Presidential Oath.
But why specifically call out senators but not the president?
It doesn’t logically make sense that they would bar you from being a senator, but not the POTUS…but the wording of it certainly makes the conclusion within reason.
If you’re asking me to get into her head and figure out why she made possibly the dumbest judgment I have ever seen, well… I’m afraid I’m not capable of doing that. If you’re asking me why the people who wrote the 14th amendment didn’t specify the president in the list of job titles… my guess is that they never thought that a president would be a traitor. It was written to target the traitors in the Confederacy, after all.
If you’re asking me to get into her head and figure out why she made possibly the dumbest judgment I have ever seen, well… I’m afraid I’m not capable of doing that.
I’m not asking you to do this. But this is a funny question to ask because courts don’t just rule and keep their reasoning in a black box, they write out a whole document as to why they ruled the way they did; you don’t need to get into her head as it’s all written out as to why she ruled that way.
f you’re asking me why the people who wrote the 14th amendment didn’t specify the president in the list of job titles… my guess is that they never thought that a president would be a traitor. It was written to target the traitors in the Confederacy, after all.
So then her ruling makes sense, because they fucked up the amendment when they passed it to not include the POTUS/VPOTUS and it should be amended. You’re basically saying that it’s a dumb ruling and that she should rule outside the law as it’s written because the people who made it didn’t think it through all the way. The latter being quite presumptuous. I’d be interested in reading about the passage of this amendment.
So then her ruling makes sense, because they fucked up the amendment when they passed it to not include the POTUS/VPOTUS and it should be amended.
I agree that it should be amended to specifically include the position of president and vice president. And any other offices they failed to enumerate.
You’re basically saying that it’s a dumb ruling and that she should rule outside the law as it’s written because the people who made it didn’t think it through all the way. The latter being quite presumptuous.
It’s not asking her to rule outside the law. It’s asking her to rule based on what the law says. Her ruling implies that the authors of the 14th amendment at one point said to themselves: “Should we write that we don’t intend this amendment to apply to the president? Nahhh. Some judge at some point in the future is bound to read through our cryptic bullshit and figure out that we mean literally every other public office but this one.”
But they explicitly call out senators and other important positions, why not specifically call out the POTUS? If it were just “officers of the state” with no specific positions called out, then I would 100% agree, but the fact that they call out some important positions but not the most important position makes it read like an intentional omission.
They addressed that point earlier, it was written after the civil war and they were calling out specific things with that in mind. They didn’t explicitly call out the president because in the historical context that would have been inconceivable, the president was never a traitor so they wouldn’t think to list the role explicitly. It seems nonsensical to claim that they would both want to exclude the president and not want to do so explicitly. If the president was meant to be excluded they could have said so.
So you’re saying that their method of explicitly stating that they don’t want “A” is to write that they want “B”, “C”, “D”, “and others” rather than just writing: “We don’t want A”? Sorry, but that’s really fucking stupid.
Edit: We’re both looking at the same thing. But where I see an oversight, you see an intentional omission. My question is… if they intended to omit something, wouldn’t it have been better to write that that position is specifically excluded? It would certainly be less confusing, wouldn’t it? If you were to write it right now, wouldn’t you write that the president is specifically excluded from the above if that was your desire? Seems to argue pretty highly for oversight, doesn’t it? Is it your contention that it was just the style at the time for people in the 1860s to be intentionally obtuse? Like Abe Simpson with the onion on his belt?
Based on her statement about the Presidential oath, I think she also bought the argument that the phrasing “having previously taken an oath… to support the Constitution” doesn’t apply because the Presidential oath doesn’t specifically include the word “support”.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It’s right there in the first sentence, “no person shall be” vp, senator, etc… not “having been.”
And this is what she (thanks for the correction) ruled. And you’re right she is ruling that they explicitly excluded it, but only from positions one is barred from holding, not saying he can hold any position still because he was president when he did it.
As I said, based on her ruling, if he tried to run for senator, she would remove him from the ballot.
(Edited to add) from the article:
The provision explicitly bans insurrectionists from serving as US senators, representatives, and even presidential electors – but it does not say anything about presidents. It says it covers “any office, civil or military, under the United States,” and Wallace ruled that this does not include the office of the presidency.
Sorry, but you’re misunderstanding her ruling. Her ruling has nothing to do with the office he’s running for, it was entirely to do with the office he held. I posted this further down in the thread, but here’s the relevant section from her ruling itself:
Here, after considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that “officers of the United States” did not include the President of the United States. While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments on both sides, the Court holds that the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the Amendment applies combined with the fact that Section Three specifies that the disqualifying oath is one to “support” the Constitution whereas the Presidential oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, it appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.
She is saying that because the president is not included in the list of offices, that it was specifically excluded by the people who wrote the 14th amendment. Therefore, he is not bound by the rules that would have applied if he were, say, a senator or representative. So if he were to run for any other office, senator, congressman, etc, it would be allowed because he never violated his oath. If he were a senator, he would have violated the oath with his actions on and around Jan. 6th, and so therefore he wouldn’t be allowed to pursue office.
In my defense, I hadn’t read the ruling, I was going off what the article said. However, having now quickly looked over the ruling, she rules both positions.
For Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to Trump this Court must find both that the Presidency is an “office . . . under the United States” and that Trump took an oath as “an officer of the United States” “to support the Constitution of the United States.”
And then she goes on to rule, as you note, that he did not take an oath to support the COTUS, but also before that
The Court holds that it is unpersuaded that the drafters intended to include the highest office in the Country in the catchall phrase “office . . . under the United States.”
So I guess we were both right, and both wrong. Good talk. I learned something today. Thank you.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
I suppose that depends on who you ask. If you ask the judge in CO, she’d say no. If you asked literally anybody else, other than that moron I spent way too long arguing with the other day, they’d say “duh”.
She, actually. And no, her interpretation was that the office of president not being listed in the opening sentence of that clause means that the “framers” specifically wanted to exclude it. Here’s the sentence in question:
The language says: “elector of President and Vice-President”, but it does not explicitly specify “President” or “Vice President”. Therefore, she ruled that though he is a traitor, he can’t be barred from running for office again.
It’s incredibly dumb.
The language also includes “any office.”
Pretty inclusive if you ask me.
Seems pretty inclusive to me, too. I’m right there with you. But the judge didn’t ask either of us, or apparently anybody who can read for their opinion, so we got this bullshit instead.
Edit: BTW - this isn’t just my flawed interpretation of the judge’s decision. It’s basically a summary of paragraph 313 of her ruling:
But why specifically call out senators but not the president?
It doesn’t logically make sense that they would bar you from being a senator, but not the POTUS…but the wording of it certainly makes the conclusion within reason.
If you’re asking me to get into her head and figure out why she made possibly the dumbest judgment I have ever seen, well… I’m afraid I’m not capable of doing that. If you’re asking me why the people who wrote the 14th amendment didn’t specify the president in the list of job titles… my guess is that they never thought that a president would be a traitor. It was written to target the traitors in the Confederacy, after all.
I’m not asking you to do this. But this is a funny question to ask because courts don’t just rule and keep their reasoning in a black box, they write out a whole document as to why they ruled the way they did; you don’t need to get into her head as it’s all written out as to why she ruled that way.
So then her ruling makes sense, because they fucked up the amendment when they passed it to not include the POTUS/VPOTUS and it should be amended. You’re basically saying that it’s a dumb ruling and that she should rule outside the law as it’s written because the people who made it didn’t think it through all the way. The latter being quite presumptuous. I’d be interested in reading about the passage of this amendment.
I agree that it should be amended to specifically include the position of president and vice president. And any other offices they failed to enumerate.
It’s not asking her to rule outside the law. It’s asking her to rule based on what the law says. Her ruling implies that the authors of the 14th amendment at one point said to themselves: “Should we write that we don’t intend this amendment to apply to the president? Nahhh. Some judge at some point in the future is bound to read through our cryptic bullshit and figure out that we mean literally every other public office but this one.”
But they explicitly call out senators and other important positions, why not specifically call out the POTUS? If it were just “officers of the state” with no specific positions called out, then I would 100% agree, but the fact that they call out some important positions but not the most important position makes it read like an intentional omission.
They addressed that point earlier, it was written after the civil war and they were calling out specific things with that in mind. They didn’t explicitly call out the president because in the historical context that would have been inconceivable, the president was never a traitor so they wouldn’t think to list the role explicitly. It seems nonsensical to claim that they would both want to exclude the president and not want to do so explicitly. If the president was meant to be excluded they could have said so.
So you’re saying that their method of explicitly stating that they don’t want “A” is to write that they want “B”, “C”, “D”, “and others” rather than just writing: “We don’t want A”? Sorry, but that’s really fucking stupid.
Edit: We’re both looking at the same thing. But where I see an oversight, you see an intentional omission. My question is… if they intended to omit something, wouldn’t it have been better to write that that position is specifically excluded? It would certainly be less confusing, wouldn’t it? If you were to write it right now, wouldn’t you write that the president is specifically excluded from the above if that was your desire? Seems to argue pretty highly for oversight, doesn’t it? Is it your contention that it was just the style at the time for people in the 1860s to be intentionally obtuse? Like Abe Simpson with the onion on his belt?
Based on her statement about the Presidential oath, I think she also bought the argument that the phrasing “having previously taken an oath… to support the Constitution” doesn’t apply because the Presidential oath doesn’t specifically include the word “support”.
Congressional oath of office:
https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/oath-of-office.htm
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”
Presidential oath of office:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S1-C8-1/ALDE_00001126/
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Yes, that was the second half of her stupid, stupid judgment.
In fairness to Trump, his oath did say “to the best of my ability…” Well… if he had no ability… :)
It’s right there in the first sentence, “no person shall be” vp, senator, etc… not “having been.”
And this is what she (thanks for the correction) ruled. And you’re right she is ruling that they explicitly excluded it, but only from positions one is barred from holding, not saying he can hold any position still because he was president when he did it.
As I said, based on her ruling, if he tried to run for senator, she would remove him from the ballot.
(Edited to add) from the article:
The provision explicitly bans insurrectionists from serving as US senators, representatives, and even presidential electors – but it does not say anything about presidents. It says it covers “any office, civil or military, under the United States,” and Wallace ruled that this does not include the office of the presidency.
Sorry, but you’re misunderstanding her ruling. Her ruling has nothing to do with the office he’s running for, it was entirely to do with the office he held. I posted this further down in the thread, but here’s the relevant section from her ruling itself:
She is saying that because the president is not included in the list of offices, that it was specifically excluded by the people who wrote the 14th amendment. Therefore, he is not bound by the rules that would have applied if he were, say, a senator or representative. So if he were to run for any other office, senator, congressman, etc, it would be allowed because he never violated his oath. If he were a senator, he would have violated the oath with his actions on and around Jan. 6th, and so therefore he wouldn’t be allowed to pursue office.
In my defense, I hadn’t read the ruling, I was going off what the article said. However, having now quickly looked over the ruling, she rules both positions.
And then she goes on to rule, as you note, that he did not take an oath to support the COTUS, but also before that
So I guess we were both right, and both wrong. Good talk. I learned something today. Thank you.
The president is the executive office, right?
I suppose that depends on who you ask. If you ask the judge in CO, she’d say no. If you asked literally anybody else, other than that moron I spent way too long arguing with the other day, they’d say “duh”.