Trump committed treason and will try again. He should be prevented from running | Robert Reich

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The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the man who committed treason more than two years ago allowed to run for president?

Answer: he shouldn’t.

Remember? Donald Trump lost re-election but he refused to concede and instead claimed baselessly that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, concocting a scheme to name fake voters, tried to persuade the vice president to refuse to certify votes in the electoral college, demanded access to voting machine data and software, persuaded his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral vote and thus moved the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day the electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the US Capitol, where they rioted.

This, my friends, is treason.

But Trump is running for re-election, despite the express language of section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which prohibits anyone who has held public office and been involved in insurrection against the United States from serving in public again. office

The reason for the disqualification clause is that a person who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be trusted to use constitutional methods to recover from office. (Notably, all three branches of the federal government described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an insurrection.)

Can any of us who saw (or learned through the committee’s intensive work on January 6) any doubt what Trump tried to do to overturn the election results in 2020 that he will try to do again any necessary to regain power, even if illegal and unconstitutional?

Trump has tried these tactics once. The likelihood of trying again is greater because loyalists are in a stronger position

Sure enough, the newly enacted Electoral Count Reform Act (amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887) filled some of the legal loopholes, creating a new threshold for members to object to a voter roll (one-fifth by members of both the House and the Senate), making it clear that the vice-president’s role is ministerial only and requiring Congress to defer the electoral rolls as determined by the states.

But what if Trump hired secretaries of state and governors loyal to him to change the election machinery to ensure he would win? What if he gets them to keep people who are likely to vote for Joe Biden from voting?

What if he can get them to appoint electors who will vote for him regardless of the outcome of the popular vote?

What if, despite all this, Biden still wins the election but Trump gets more than 20% of Republican senators and members of the House to object to the voter registrations promised to Biden, and push the House elections where Trump has the majority of votes ?

Does anyone doubt the possibility that no, the possibility of any or all of this happening?

Trump has tried these tactics once. The likelihood that he will try again is greater now that his loyalists are now in stronger positions throughout the state and federal governments.

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Yes, they were detained in the 2022 midterms. But in state after state, and in Congress, Republicans who stood up to Trump have now been purged from the party. And lawmakers in what’s left of the Republican party have made it clear they will bend or ignore any rule that stands in their way.

In many cases, the groundwork has been laid. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, Trump allies who traveled to Coffee county, Georgia, on 7 January 2021 gained access to sensitive election data. They copied election software used across Georgia and uploaded it to the internet with an open invitation to manipulate the 2024 election by Trump allies.

If anything, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020.

In 2016, I declared that I am your voice, Trump said last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a line he repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally, in Waco, Texas, a few weeks later. Now, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have sinned and betrayed, I am your recompense.

Filing deadlines for 2024 presidential candidates are coming up in the next six months, in most states.

The secretaries of state who in most cases are in charge of deciding who gets on the ballot should refuse to put Donald Trump’s name on the 2024 ballot, based on the clear meaning of section three of the 14th amendment in the US constitution.

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