(DCWatchdog.com) – In a dream scenario for the Democrats edging closer to reality, the Republican secretary of state of New Hampshire is considering keeping Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot over the “insurrection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan has launched consultations with the state attorney general to decide whether he could remove the former president from the 2024 ballot based on the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, ABC 7 Chicago reports, as cited by Breitbart News.
Section 3 of the Fourteenth states a public official is not eligible to hold public office again if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States or had “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” – unless granted amnesty with a two-thirds majority of Congress.
There have recently been calls by some leftist and anti-Trump conservative legal scholars, as well as by one GOP nomination bidder, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, to keep Trump off the ballot because of the Disqualification Clause of the Fourteenth.
They insist the January 6 events at the US Capitol presented an “insurrection” led by the 45th president of the United States.
Other legal scholars, such as liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, disagreed, arguing January 6 was no “insurrection.”
Breitbart stresses that the idea to keep Trump off the ballot was brought to Scanlan by New Hampshire attorney Bryant “Corky” Messner, whom the former president endorsed in New Hampshire’s 2020 US Senate race.
“I really don’t view myself as turning on Trump, as odd as that sounds. I love this country. I’ve served this country. I’ve taken an oath to this country. My sons are serving right now and I believe someone’s got to step up to defend the Constitution,” Messner told ABC News.
“Someone needs to take some action legally so this thing can get in front of the Supreme Court sooner rather than later to interpret this section,” he declared.
The report points out that Trump remains 20 points in the lead among Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, ahead of the next closest GOP nomination candidate, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 34% to 14%, according to a recent Echelon Insights survey.
“Secretary Scanlan will be conferring with the New Hampshire Attorney General and other legal counsel on this issue; however, he believes any action taken under this Constitutional provision will have to be based on Judicial guidance,” Scanlan’s communications director Anna Sventek said.
Scanlan himself declared he wasn’t “really qualified to say whether [January 6] was an ‘insurrection’ or not,” but he deemed it a “really unfortunate event in our history.”
“I think that is for the courts to decide,” the New Hampshire Republican stated.
