A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trumps ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitutions 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the government cannot hold office.
The challenge was first reported by The Palm Beach Post.
The bottom line here is that President Trump both engaged in an insurrection and also gave aid and comfort to other individuals who were engaging in such actions, within the clear meaning of those terms as defined in Section Three of the 14th Amendment, Caplan wrote in the filing. Assuming that the public record to date is accurate, and we have no evidence to the contrary, Trump is no longer eligible to seek the office of the President of the United States, or of any other state of the Union.
Caplans challenge is one of the first questioning the legality of Trumps 2024 bid, though Trump is also facing criminal charges at both the state and federal level over his actions to undo the results of the 2020 vote.
The former president is currently the far-and-away front-runner in the GOP presidential primary.
In an interview with The Hill, Caplan said that someone had to take the lead on challenging Trumps candidacy.
This is a scary, scary guy, and if hes president, I think were all on the way to fascism, he said. Theres no law that says we have to remain a democracy forever.
In the filing, Caplan wrote that the facts of his case are undeniably simple. In 2016, Trump won the presidential election, and in 2020, he lost it. The following Jan. 6, Trump encouraged a throng of supporters to march to the Capitol, saying hed be right there with them, Caplan wrote.
As we are well aware, the throng marched on the Capitol, forced their way into the Capitol building, ransacked the rotunda area, and even made their way into several offices of representatives and senators, he wrote.
The 14th Amendments disqualification clause was written in the context of the Civil War, meant to bar those who had joined the Confederacy from serving in state or federal office. But it would theoretically still apply to those who engage in future rebellions or insurrections against the U.S., according to Cornell Universitys Legal Information Institute.
Caplan told The Hill that he did not originally believe Trumps role in the Capitol attack could disqualify him from becoming president again. That changed when he read an analysis by former 4th Circuit Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe.
In an article published last week in The Atlantic, Luttig, a conservative, and Tribe, who is liberal, contended that Trumps efforts to remain in power after losing in 2020 place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause.
Trumps grand jury indictments in the Washington, D.C., federal case and the Georgia case probing those efforts make his disqualification automatic, Caplan said.
Trump surrendered to authorities on the Georgia charges Thursday evening, becoming the first former U.S. president to have a mug shot taken.
The common sense of it is that the law says that someone whos indicted for causing an insurrection is automatically ineligible to run for federal office, Caplan told The Hill.
about time.. but seriously from Florida of all places?!!!!
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