Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. Disqualified: The case for Donald Trump's disqualification under the 14th Amendment

https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/20230714_CREW_Report_Final.pdf

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January 6th was an “insurrection” against the Constitution

Ample evidence and authoritative sources establish that the January 6th attack on the Capitol and surrounding events constituted an “insurrection” against the Constitution of the United States.

Case law from the Civil War era recognized that the “existence of the rebellion [was] a matter of public notoriety,” supported by “public documents” such as “proclamations of the president” and “acts of congress.”⁶⁹ Similarly, the existence of the January 6th insurrection is a “matter of public notoriety” supported by bipartisan acts of Congress, congressional reports, presidential statements, judicial decisions, and other “public documents.”

All three branches of the federal government have referred to the January 6th attack as an insurrection. Just days after the attack, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”⁷⁰ And after a trial in the Senate, a bipartisan majority of senators found Trump “guilty” of the same, though it fell short of the two-thirds supermajority threshold for conviction.⁷¹ Congress has also passed bipartisan bills honoring law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol that refer to the January 6th attackers as “insurrectionists.”⁷²

President Biden – the current Chief Executive of the United States – has referred repeatedly to January 6th as an insurrection.⁷³ The Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump’s administration characterized January 6th as an “insurrection” in court filings.⁷⁴ Since then, the DOJ has also brought charges and secured convictions of key players in the attack for “seditious conspiracy,” a charge that closely tracks the definition of insurrection.⁷⁵ President Trump’s own impeachment lawyers stated that “everyone agrees” that there was “‘a violent insurrection of the Capitol’ on January 6th” and referred to the attackers as “insurrectionists.”⁷⁶

68 Barrett, 63 N.C. at 204.
69 United States v. Greathouse, 26 F. Cas. 18, 22 (C.C.N.D. Cal. 1863). This report is not intended to provide a complete legal analysis on the meaning of the term “insurrection.”
70 See H.R. Res. 24, 117th Cong. (2021) (impeaching Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection”).
71 Barbara Sprunt, 7 GOP Senators Voted to Convict Trump. Only 1 Faces Voters Next Year, NPR (Feb. 15, 2021), https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-trial-live-updates/2021/02/15/967878039/7-gop-senators-voted-to-convict-trump-only-1-faces-voters-next-year.
72 See Act of Aug. 5, 2021, Pub. L. No. 117-32 (2021); S. Con. Res. 14, 117th Cong. (2021); S. 35, 117th Cong. (2021).
73 See, e.g., President Joe Biden, Statement By President Joe Biden On the Six-month Anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection On the Capitol (July 6, 2021), https://perma.cc/VS89-CC3B; Letter from Dana A. Remus, Counsel to the President, to David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States (Oct. 8, 2021), https://perma.cc/SND5-58EX; President Joe Biden, Remarks by President Biden at Signing of H.R. 3325, Awarding Congressional Gold Medals To Those Who Protected the U.S. Capitol On January 6, 2021 WL 3418358; President Joe Biden, Remarks By President Biden On Protecting the Sacred, Constitutional Right To Vote, 2021 WL 2935591.
74 United States v. Chansley, No. 21-cr-00003, ECF No. 5 (D. Ariz. filed Jan. 14, 2021), https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Jacob%20Chansley%20Detention%20Memo.pdf.
75 U.S. v. Rhodes, et al., 1:22-cr-00015-APM, Superseding Indictment at 14-32 (D.D.C. June 22, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/1514906/download; see also Four Oath Keepers Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy Related to U.S. Capitol Breach, Dep’t of Just. (Jan. 23, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-oath-keepers-found-guilty-seditious-conspiracy-related-us-capitol-breach; Jury Convicts Four Leaders of the Proud Boys of Seditious Conspiracy Related to U.S. Capitol Breach, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Dist. of Columbia (May 4, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/jury-convicts-four-leaders-proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-related-us-capitol-breach.
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From the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211109152320/https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Jacob%20Chansley%20Detention%20Memo.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/1514906/download
https://web.archive.org/web/20241228153729/https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-oath-keepers-found-guilty-seditious-conspiracy-related-us-capitol-breach