Two conservative constitutional law professors have concluded that Donald Trump cannot be president again unless two-thirds of Congress votes to give him amnesty for leading an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The New York Times published the results from the University of Chicago's William Baude and the University of St. Thomas' Michael Stokes Paulsen.
Baude told the paper they were initially unsure whether a constitutional provision against running for office applied to Trump. The Constitution states that anyone who took an oath of office cannot hold office if they "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
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"People were talking about this provision of the Constitution," Baude said. "We thought: 'We're constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what's really going on here.' And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add."
The findings are set to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review article.
"Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6," the article concludes, according to the Times.
Paulsen argued that the article could lead to "a lawsuit presenting a vital constitutional issue that potentially the Supreme Court would want to hear and decide."
Both Baude and Paulsen are members of the conservative Federalist Society. They said there was "abundant evidence" that Trump participated in an insurrection.
