Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley explained Tuesday why calls to invoke the 14th Amendment to prevent former President Donald Trump from running are “dangerous.”
William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas wrote an article set to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review suggesting Trump may be ineligible for the 2024 race due to his efforts to contest the 2020 election. “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said Tuesday that the legal theory should be used to block Trump from running for office.
“I think it’s the most dangerous theory that has emerged in decades. I think it’s entirely unsupported by the text and the history of the 14th Amendment. This provision was written after the Civil War of an actual rebellion where hundreds of thousands of people died — there was an army on the other side. They had their own foreign policy,” Turley said.
“So, look, if they can use this against Trump, what stops them from finding that someone else supported, you know, insurrection that wasn’t an insurrection? So you can see where this would continue to leapfrog across other potential races,” host Laura Ingraham said later. (RELATED: ‘It’s Not Going To Stop Here’: Kash Patel Predicts Democrats Will Use ’17 Other Amendments’ To Block Trump From Ballot)
“That’s right. And the ambiguity within this theory is quite maddening. If Trump had asked people to come back an hour earlier, would that have been not an insurrection? If he had mentioned go there peacefully three more times, would that have made the difference? We need a bright line rule. After all, Rep. Raskin and Democrats tried to stop the certification of Donald Trump in 2016. There were violent riots in Washington, D.C., against his inauguration,” Turley said.
“They had no grounds for that, there were no grounds in earlier certification fights by Democrats. Does that mean that they were all engaged in some rebellion or insurrection? No it doesn’t. We have to have some type of bright line rule that guarantees that the voters can make decisions on these questions — I’m not saying people cannot read this as an insurrection as opposed to a riot. But you have to ask yourself is this what you want replicated for the future? I don’t think it is.”
Former Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina faced similar efforts to disqualify him from running for office again for allegedly supporting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol Building. The effort was revived in May 2022 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, according to the American Bar Association Journal. Cawthorn was defeated for reelection that same month.