The Constitution Has a Disqualification Clause. Trump’s Withdrawal from Syria Has Triggered It.
Takeaways:
- The Constitution has a Disqualification Clause. It is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
- Trump’s withdrawal from Syria has triggered the Disqualification Clause.
- Violations of the 14th Amendment must be decided by the federal court system — not Congress.
Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment reads:
“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.”
If we clear out the clutter, this piece of the Constitution more clearly states:
“No person shall… hold any office…to support the Constitution of the United States… [that has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the Constitution]…or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Further, it would take two-thirds of the Congress to overturn a court’s conviction.
Despite Trump’s efforts to downplay the adversarial relationship between the United States and Russia and upgrade their standing on the global political stage, Russia is and has been a long standing political and military adversary of the United States. By pulling out of Syria, Trump has given Russia a strategic advantage in the region they would have otherwise not been able to attain. This advantage comes at the expense of American national security.
It can be argued that by pulling out of the Kurdish alliance, Trump not only gave aid and comfort to our enemies — he gave them Syria.
As the title of a recently published article in the Washington Post notes, “Trump’s moves in Ukraine and Syria have a common denominator: Both help Russia.” The report goes on to describe:
“Russia announced Tuesday that its military is patrolling near the northern Syrian town of Manbij, moving to fill a security vacuum after Trump pulled U.S. troops from the area.
Russian forces are now operating between the Turkish and Syrian militaries, helping to fulfill Moscow’s main aim of shoring up its alliance with Syria and the Russian military port housed there — an outcome Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought for years.”
As impeachment proceedings continue, more evidence of a comforting relationship between Russia and the Trump Administration will be revealed. This information can be used to bolster a Fourteenth Amendment claim in a federal court that Trump’s relationship with Russia was nothing if not comforting.
Russia wasn’t the only beneficiary of Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, though. The other main beneficiary of Trump’s Syrian pull-out is ISIS. In fact, the benefits to ISIS are so pronounced, even Fox News has spoken out against it. For example, Fox News Reporter Colin Clarke recently published an alarming piece entitled, “ISIS is big winner from US withdrawal from Syria.”
Over 12,000 people with ties to ISIS reside in Syria and hundreds more were being held in prisons there under the watch of Kurdish forces. As the Kurds have been forced to abandon their posts to defend themselves from a Turkish slaughter, hundreds of members of ISIS have already escaped and concerns that they will reorganize in Syria and many of the Middle Eastern and European countries from which they were detained are becoming a quick reality.
There are many divides in this nation, but one of them is not that ISIS is our enemy. And as reported by media outlets, politicians, and military officials across party lines, Trump’s withdrawal from Syria has given them great aid and comfort.
The Constitution was designed to protect the nation from our enemies — both internally and internationally. While impeachment proceedings can and should continue in Congress in relation to the Administration’s quid-pro-quo with the Ukraine, additional charges need to brought against Donald Trump, the Trump Administration, and every member of the Republican party that has either assisted him in his Fourteenth Amendment violations, or attempted to prevent investigations into these violations in a federal court of law.
Should they be found guilty of violating the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three of the Constitution, these members of the Republican Party would be disqualified from running for re-election in 2020. And it would take two-thirds of the Congress to overturn this conviction.
The nation is not safe so long as our enemies are operating out of the highest levels of our federal government. And while we may not be able to remove them from office using the Fourteenth Amendment, we may be able to prevent them from running for re-election. And we have a Constitutional responsibility to do so.
You can find Dr. GS Potter on Twitter at https://twitter.com/strategistirl
