According to former prosecutor Shan Wu, there are multiple avenues to either make Donald Trump ineligible to run for president again or keep him off the ballot at the state level.
In his column for the Daily Beast, Wu made his case that the former president is already ineligible to run under the "Disqualification Clause" found in the U.S. Constitution, adding that the standard required to be banned fits Trump "like a glove."
Citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that states, "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," the former prosecutor added, "The plain language of this obviously encompasses Trump’s actions to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election."
More importantly, he noted, the former president doesn't need to be convicted in a court of law of leading an insurrection.
Wu cited Professor Laurence Tribe and former Judge Michael Luttig who wrote in The Atlantic, "... the disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation.”
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Wu then added, "the requirement of a criminal conviction is fictitious because that’s not what the Constitution says. It simply says 'insurrection' and 'rebellion.' The lack of a specified method of enforcement can hardly be fatal to the legal theory since the Constitution generally does not give specific enforcement instructions."
Aside from that, he asserted there exists a legal path for states to keep the quadruple-indicted former president off the 2024 ballot.
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"...citizens and states could challenge his presence on the ballot through the courts. There has already been a recent case involving removal of a Jan. 6 rioter from their position on a New Mexico state commission," he suggested. "All of these, naturally, would result in litigation which likely would end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Nor is it clear how the Supreme Court would rule on this. Just because there is a conservative majority—including three Trump appointees—does not mean they would rule in his favor, especially given the originalist interpretation bent of the conservative justices."
He then made the observation that just one state could drive a stake in the heart of a second Trump presidency.
"Political fallout is inevitable and any efforts to disqualify Trump may even strengthen his support in the short term, helping him to secure the Republican nomination," he predicted, "But should a single battle ground state or reliably red state disqualify Trump from running, the effect would cripple his chances in the general election."
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