The Constitution Says We Can Stop Trump and the Republicans from Seeking Re-election. We Should Probably Listen.
The dam has finally broken, and the Democratic Party is moving forward on impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. The final straw came after a whistleblower complaint revealed that Donald Trump attempted to manipulate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election on his behalf. Further revelations and admissions have connected Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr, Vice President Mike Pence, and Senator Mitch McConnell to the efforts themselves, as well as the attempted cover-up that followed.
While impeachment hearing are likely to be the cornerstone of the Democrats’ strategy to remove the President from office, there are already reports that the Republican controlled Congress is preparing to prevent a conviction from being reached in the Senate.
Impeachment proceeding can, should, and likely will proceed nonetheless; however, actions need to be taken to prevent officials that are cooperating with the President from holding office. With a Republican stronghold in the Senate, it is unlikely that any of the co-conspirators in the Trump Administration or Congress will be removed from office through impeachment proceedings. The Constitution offers another remedy for public officials that have engaged in treasonous behavior though.
Section 3 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.
This means that if the Democrats hire lawyers to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in court, Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators like Vice President Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell can be prevented from running for reelection in 2020. And it would take 2\3 of the House and the Senate to UNDO it.
Theoretically, every member of the Republican Party that took a loyalty oath to the President could be prevented form running for re-election. And with little else standing between the nation and a network of public officials personally and peripherally rebelling against the Constitution with the assistance of Russian authorities — the 14th Amendment might be our greatest chance of stopping the Trump Administration, the Republican Party, and Russia from dismantling the United States.
The question is, with the option of removing Trump loyalists from the next round of federal elections — will they choose to do it?
You can find Dr. GS Potter on Twitter at @stratetgistirl
