2024 U.S. Election of President and Vice President

[JRT]

I saw and read that. Now we will see if those originalists are really originalists or not. I'm betting that at least Thomas is all talk and simply votes his bias.

I would not be surprised to see SCOTUS may take the middle ground by affirming originalist interpretation without deciding whether or not it is applicable to Don Johnny Trump, without deciding whether or not he, "...shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. "

His co-conspirators in both houses of Congress may also be vulnerable to this, so if Don Johnny Trump is disqualified from holding office by this, so too they may be disqualified. Trumplican minions and sycophants are not merely fighting against his disqualification, but are also acting to protect their own positions.

AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.
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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

...

[Albany Rifles]

What? Fifty Shades of Grey or The Times literary supplement?

My vote is Catch 22

[Albany Rifles]

I saw and read that. Now we will see if those originalists are really originalists or not. I'm betting that at least Thomas is all talk and simply votes his bias.

Well...states rights are only for Republican states.

[Monash]

I saw and read that. Now we will see if those originalists are really originalists or not. I'm betting that at least Thomas is all talk and simply votes his bias.

There's a counterbalancing risk there though. Even Thomas has to ask himslef 'OK then if I go along with this line of argument what constitutional/legal authority am I potentially handing any future Democrat President of the United States when they enter office?'

[tbm3fan]

...

I saw and read that. Now we will see if those originalists are really originalists or not. I'm betting that at least Thomas is all talk and simply votes his bias.

[JRT]

Tuesday, 30 January 2024
Lawrence O’Donnell:
Historians’ brief teaches Supreme Court 14th Amendment’s real history
(11 min, 54 sec)

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell analyzes new filings to the Supreme Court as it prepares to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s challenge of a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that found he was ineligible for the state’s primary ballot after violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

...

[TopHatter]

‘The threat isn’t over’: the expert arguing to the supreme court Trump is an insurrectionist

When Jill Habig had an office down the hall from Kamala Harris in California, Barack Obama was US president, abortion was a constitutional right and January 6 was just another date on the calendar. A lot has happened since then.

On Thursday Habig, now president of the non-profit Public Rights Project (PRP), hopes her arguments will persuade the supreme court that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who should be disqualified from the 2024 presidential election.

Habig has filed an amicus brief on behalf of historians contending that section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office, applies to Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

The brief gives the supreme court’s originalists, who believe the constitution should be interpreted as it would have been in the era it was written, a taste of their own medicine. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are self-declared originalists while Samuel Alito has described himself as a “practical originalist”.

“Our goal was to bring an originalist historical perspective to the supreme court as it considered the meaning of section 3 of the 14th amendment,” Habig, a former special counsel to then California attorney general Harris, says by phone from Oakland. “The point we make with our historian colleagues is that the history of section 3 is actually very clear. It demonstrates that section 3 was intended to automatically disqualify insurrectionists.”

The amicus brief, led by historians Jill Lepore of Harvard and David Blight of Yale, cites debates from the time in which senators made clear that their view that the provision that would not only apply for former Confederates but to the leaders of rebellions yet to come.

Habig adds: “It was intended to apply not only to the civil war but also to future insurrections and it bars anyone who has betrayed an oath to uphold the constitution from becoming president of the United States.”

The supreme court will hear arguments on a Colorado case in which Trump was stricken from the ballot; a decision in Maine is on hold. Other states have ruled in favor of keeping Trump on the ballot. The flurry of decisions have prompted debate over whether Trump can be fairly considered to have committed insurrection even though he has not been found guilty in a court of law – at least not yet.

Habig, who founded the PRP in 2017, says yes. “It’s clear historically that there was no requirement of a conviction or even of charges, that the framers intended section 3 to be self-executing. The brief goes through a number of examples of people who had taken part in the secession and been on the Confederate side actually petitioning Congress for exceptions. There’s a lot of evidence that it was self-executing. There was no need for a particular conviction.”

She adds: “The evidence that we have seen and heard and watched with our own eyes over the last few years has made it quite clear that President Trump lost an election in 2020 and has spent the months and years since then trying to overturn the results of that election in a variety of ways, including people marching to the Capitol and invading the Capitol.”
.

It’s difficult to argue with a straight face that these activities don’t qualify for section 3

Jill Habig

Indeed, Blight has pointed out that the US Capitol was never breached during the civil war but was on January 6. Habig comments: “It’s difficult to argue with a straight face that these activities don’t qualify for section 3.”

Still, there are plenty of Republicans, Democrats and neutrals who warn that the 14th amendment drive is politically counterproductive, fueling a Trumpian narrative that state institutions are out to stop him and that Joe Biden is the true threat to democracy. Let the people decide at the ballot box in November, they say.

Habig counters: “It’s important to note that the American people did decide in 2020. We had a political process and then we had a president of the United States who attempted to overturn that political process. ”

Spectacular as it was, the January 6 riot did not occur in a vacuum. Habig and her work at the PRP place it in a wider context of a growing movement to harass and threaten election officials and to interfere with the administration of elections. She perceives a direct line between Trump’s “big lie” and threats to democracy across the country today.

“Regardless of this particular case, the threat isn’t over. It’s actually intensifying. We’re just seeing an array of efforts to rig the rules of the game against our democracy and it’s part of why we’re investing a lot of resources into protecting election officials this cycle, and to litigating and advancing voting rights and free and fair elections this year.”

How did America get here? A turning point was the supreme court’s 5-4 decision in 2013 to strike down a formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, so that voters who are discriminated against now bear the burden of proving they are disenfranchised. Since then states have engaged in a barrage of gerrymandering – manipulating district boundaries so as to favor one party – and voter suppression.

Habig reflects: “The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the supreme court left states to themselves to rewrite the rules of the game in a variety of ways that disenfranchised voters and continued to rig maps against their systems and fair representation.

“We’ve seen the supreme court take itself out of the game of protecting other fundamental rights like abortion and throw that back into the states. What that’s creating is a lot of volatility at the state and local level as officials try to rewrite the rules or pick up the pieces and protect their constituents’ rights. What we’re trying to do is help state and local officials across the country use the power that they have to fight back and advance civil rights in all the ways that they can.”

The PRP is building a rapid response hub to provide legal support for 200 election officials to combat harassment and intimidation and targeting election deniers. It is pursuing litigation against gerrymandering, the disqualification of legitimate ballots and state officials who try to prevent voters weighing in on ballot measures to advance abortion rights.

“This is an all-out effort to make sure that we don’t have death by a thousand cuts for our democracy this year,” Habig says. “We are potentially less likely to see one central threat like we did on January 6 or even in the 2020 election. We’ve seen some of the larger counties like Maricopa county, Arizona, Philadelphia, Detroit et cetera, who have been targets in the past, have more resources to fight back.

“What we’re most concerned about is the soft underbelly of our democracy, which is the smaller, less-resourced jurisdictions that just don’t have all of the capacity they need to push back against this harassment and intimidation. Because of our decentralised system, election deniers who are intent on disrupting our elections and disrupting the outcome of our election don’t have to mount a huge effort in one place.

“They can pick apart jurisdiction by jurisdiction, invalidate 250 ballots here, and a thousand ballots there and 500 there, challenge absentee ballots, disrupt targeted polling places and that in the aggregate can actually change election results, sow disillusionment and distrust in our system and have the same or even worse aggregate outcome in terms of undermining the integrity of our election. That’s what we’re mobilising to prevent.”
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[TopHatter]

Robocall Using Fake Joe Biden Voice Traced Back To Texas Company

The New Hampshire attorney general on Tuesday detailed a criminal investigation into a robocall that reached thousands of New Hampshire residents ahead of the state’s presidential primary last month, in which an AI-generated Joe Biden voice urged Democrats not to vote.

During a press conference, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said that investigators had traced the Jan. 21 calls to Life Corporation, a Texas-based company whose owner Formella identified as Walter Monk. He also said that Lingo Telecom, another Texas-based company, was the “originating service provider” for the calls.

Neither company immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment about what Formella shared. He said investigators had also identified other entities “who are not necessarily responsible for the calls but who we believe have pertinent information.”

The state attorney general said he hadn’t seen anything like the phony Biden robocall before last month.

“I think this case is unique in that it’s providing us a real-life example of an attempt to use AI to interfere with an election,” Formella said. “That’s been something we’ve been concerned about in the law enforcement community for a while, and certainly something that the state attorneys general have talked about, but we have not seen as concrete an example as this, days before a primary, an attempt to use AI to interfere with an election.”

In the call, which had a false caller ID appearing to belong to a former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, a fake Biden voice urged Democrats to sit out of the primary process.

“This coming Tuesday is the New Hampshire presidential preference primary. Republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and Democratic voters to participate in their primary. What a bunch of malarkey,” the voice said.

“We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It’s important that you save your vote for the November election,” the fake Biden added. “We’ll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

Biden, though he was not on the primary ballot, ultimately won the New Hampshire primary.

Formella said that the robocall — which reached somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 people — was now the subject of a criminal investigation and potential civil litigation, having potentially violated both state and federal laws against voter suppression and fraudulent robocalls.

The New Hampshire Department of Justice issued a cease-and-desist letter to Life Corporation “that orders the company to immediately cease violating New Hampshire election laws” and has opened a criminal investigation, Formella said. As part of that investigation, the agency has sent document preservation notices and subpoenas to Life Corporation, Lingo Telecom “and any other individual or entity who we believe may have information relevant to this investigation,” he said.

The Federal Communications Commission has also issued a cease-and-desist to Lingo Telecom, demanding it stop allowing “illegal robocall traffic on its platform,” Formella added. The attorney general’s anti-robocall task force is preparing for potential civil action against Life Corporation and any other entity potentially involved.

“We will not tolerate any action that seeks to undermine the integrity of our elections and our democratic process,” Formella said. “The message to any person or company who would attempt to engage in these activities is clear and simple. Don’t try it.”
__________

[Albany Rifles]

I can see it as I would classify Trump fanatics as dangerous and there are enough of them around.

Absolutely and they will count her as disloyal to Velveeta Voldemort and therefore needs to be removed.

[tbm3fan]

Nikki Haley requests Secret Service protection

I think this would be a very good idea...well through the election regardless of what happens to her campaign.

I can see it as I would classify Trump fanatics as dangerous and there are enough of them around.

[Albany Rifles]

Nikki Haley requests Secret Service protection

I think this would be a very good idea...well through the election regardless of what happens to her campaign.

[statquo]

Nikki Haley requests Secret Service protection

Nikki Haley's presidential campaign has applied for Secret Service protection, according to a spokesperson with the campaign and another source familiar with the situation.

The campaign spokesperson did not say what prompted the request, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

But Haley, who is former President Donald Trump's remaining major challenger in the 2024 Republican primary race, has faced some recent incidents including being the target of two "swatting" attempts at her home in South Carolina, according to records previously obtained by ABC News.

In both cases, police were falsely directed to her residence on suspicion of a crime. In one of the incidents, she has said, her parents were home with a caretaker when officers arrived with "guns drawn."

"It put the law enforcement officers in danger, it put my family in danger and, you know, it was not a safe situation," Haley said in an interview with NBC News last month.

"That's what happens when you run for president," she said then. "What I don't want is for my kids to live like this."

She added that she felt the "swatting" was evidence of the "chaos surrounding our country right now." (Both cases have been administratively closed, without known arrests.)

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a five-person advisory council that includes the leaders of both chambers of Congress will now begin a threat assessment as part of responding to Haley, according to the Secret Service website.

DHS and the Secret Service did not comment.

——————————————

[TopHatter]

On the federal charges, I suspect that a POTUS can direct the US Attorney General to make a choice to either resign or have the prosecutors drop the charges and withdraw the federal cases against the POTUS. If so, and if he does not suffer a federal conviction prior to the early afternoon of 20 January 2025, a newly reelected President Trump would not need immunity and does not need ability to directly pardon himself, when he can influence the US Attorney General or his replacements until POTUS eventually gets what he wants from them.

He'll also be able to stymie the State charges as well. Not outright cancel them of course, but stall them long enough that they get dropped for one reason or another.

[JRT]

On the federal charges, I suspect that a POTUS can direct the US Attorney General to make a choice to either resign or have the prosecutors drop the charges and withdraw the federal cases against the POTUS. If so, and if he does not suffer a federal conviction prior to the early afternoon of 20 January 2025, a newly reelected President Trump would not need immunity and does not need ability to directly pardon himself, when he can influence the US Attorney General or his replacements until POTUS eventually gets what he wants from them.

[TopHatter]

Trump heads to US Supreme Court with a familiar claim: he is untouchable


Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a rally in advance of the New Hampshire primary election in Laconia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump will try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court this week to reverse a judicial decision to kick him off the ballot in Colorado over his actions concerning the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, arguing that the constitutional provision his opponents cite does not apply to him as a former president.

It may not be the only time Trump makes this type of assertion to the justices. As he fights four criminal cases and civil litigation in lower courts, Trump has repeatedly advanced a bold argument: that he is formally immune or otherwise not subject to these legal challenges.

"Trump appears obsessed with trying to place himself above the law. The theme running throughout these claims is that he cannot be held liable at law for anything he has done," said constitutional law expert Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor. "No president or former president has made such outlandish, self-serving claims."

The Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees, on Thursday is scheduled to hear Trump's appeal of a ruling by Colorado's top court that disqualified him from the state's Republican primary ballot under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection. He is the frontrunner for his party's nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

While Trump has not asserted sweeping presidential immunity as a defense in that case, the Supreme Court still may have to confront the issue, including in criminal and civil actions over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss and defamation claims by a woman who accused him of rape.

Trump in the past has shown contempt for constraints on his actions. He famously said during his successful 2016 presidential campaign that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

In his effort to escape federal criminal charges involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, a lawyer for Trump indicated to appellate judges that a president could order Navy commandos to assassinate a political rival and still be immune from prosecution unless first being impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate.

IMMUNITY CLAIM

Asked to comment on his immunity assertions, a Trump campaign spokesperson pointed to his Jan. 10 social media post stating that a president could not function without "COMPLETE IMMUNITY." In a post nine days later, Trump said presidents need immunity even for "events that 'cross the line.'"

The Supreme Court will confront novel questions when it reviews the Colorado Supreme Court's decision that Trump is disqualified from the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars any "officer of the United States" who "engaged in insurrection" from holding public office. In that case, Trump contends that he is not subject to Section 3 because the president is not an "officer of the United States."

Trump is advancing claims of immunity in other cases that could reach the Supreme Court, which historically has held that presidential immunity, while it exists, cannot be absolute.

In cases involving former Presidents Richard Nixon in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1997, the court found that presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for acts undertaken in their official capacity, but not from suits concerning personal and unofficial conduct. It has never ruled directly on whether presidents are immune from criminal prosecution.

Trump's fight against federal criminal charges involving his efforts to undo his election defeat is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after a federal judge rejected his immunity assertion.

University of California, Berkeley, law professor John Yoo, who served in President George W. Bush's administration, said he expects the Supreme Court would reject Trump's claim.

"His lawyers are pressing unprecedented arguments that are likely to fail in court, but they are not frivolous," Yoo said.

Trump has similarly claimed presidential immunity as a defense in a Georgia criminal case concerning election interference, civil lawsuits involving the Capitol riot, and in writer E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit accusing him of defaming her by denying in 2019 that he raped her in the 1990s.

The Supreme Court in 2020 rejected Trump's claim of immunity from a subpoena that then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. issued as part of an investigation into hush money paid by Trump's then-lawyer to a porn star before the 2016 election.

Some legal experts expressed doubt that Trump will prevail at the Supreme Court on the immunity issue, but warned of the consequences if he does. It would "send the dangerous message that presidents can disregard the Constitution and federal law with impunity," said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal legal group.

"A win for Trump in the immunity case," Gorod said, "would be profoundly troubling regardless of who wins the election this November."
________