Below is my column in the New York Post on the expansion of the 14th Amendment theory to attempt to remove Republican candidates for Congress from the ballots. Dozens of Democratic members have already called for the disqualification of up to 126 Republican colleagues under the same sweeping theory. These efforts show how this theory could place this country on a slippery slope to political chaos if not clearly and finally rejected by the Supreme Court.
Here is the column:
As the decisions disqualifying former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election work their way through the courts, a new filing in Pennsylvania seeks the same “ballot cleansing” by barring Repubfenablican Rep. Scott Perry.
It’s only the latest effort targeting congressional candidates as Democrats seek to bar opponents as “insurrectionists” for questioning the election of President Biden.
We have become a nation of Madame Defarges — eagerly knitting names of those to be subject to arbitrary justice.
Former congressional candidate Gene Stilp, who’s previously made headlines by burning MAGA flags with swastikas outside courthouses, filed the challenge.
Using the 14th Amendment to disqualify candidates like Perry is consistent with Stilp’s signature flag-burning stunts.
But what’s chilling is how many support such efforts, including Democratic officeholders from Maine’s Secretary of State to dozens of members of Congress.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory for challenging the election before Jan. 6, 2021.
Similar legislation from Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres and “Squad” members Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
When Maine’s secretary of state disqualified Trump, three in the state’s congressional delegation — Sens. Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) and Rep. Jared Golden (D) — condemned the decision. But others supported the antidemocratic action.
The grounds were virtually identical to those of Stilp. He accuses Perry of supporting challenges to Biden’s election and opposing its certification.
Of course, he ignores Democratic members who sought to block certification of Republican presidents under the very same law with no factual or legal basis.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election.
Jan. 6 committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted to challenge it in the House.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result — particularly ironic since he’s a leading voice calling for Trump to be disqualified.
He insisted last week on CNN that the effort to prevent citizens from voting for Trump is the very embodiment of democracy: “If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.”
That is akin to treating every criminal charge as a consensual act of incarceration because the accused chose his path in life.
This is also being played out in state races.
The filing against Perry came the same day Pennsylvania Democratic state Sen. Art Haywood made public a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee against his Republican colleague Doug Mastriano accusing him of playing a role in the plot to overturn the election.
Notably, in his effort to “hold insurrectionists accountable,” Haywood admitted he relied on the same evidence from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that was used in the Colorado case.
“Insurrectionist” is the newest label to excuse any abuse.
During the McCarthy period, individuals were accused of being Communists or “fellow travelers.”
Now you have Stilp accusing Perry of being “supportive of insurrectionists.”
Democrats and pundits have claimed civil libertarians and journalists who have testified against the government’s growing censorship efforts are enablers of insurrectionists and even “Putin lovers.”
These Democratic members and activists vividly demonstrated the dangerous implications of this unfounded theory.
Figures like Stilp are wrong on the law but right about one thing: There are few real limits once you embrace this theory.
If the challenges work, there is no reason they can’t be used unilaterally against any candidate (and without any criminal charges, let alone convictions).
It is instantly both self-executing and self-satisfying. It would put the world’s most successful democracy on a slippery slope to political chaos.
That is why the Supreme Court needs to take up this issue and put this pernicious theory to bed once and for all.
Until the court rejects this antidemocratic ploy, activists eager to win elections through the courts will keep using it, and it will metastasize throughout our body politic.
With the support of elected officials across the country, they can then join Stilp in moving from burning flags to torching the Constitution in a fit of exhilarating rage.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
hoping to see a big dog corruption scandal with major fallout among democrats. Way past time for wholesale turnover, too many entrenched special interests and people that have been in office for decades.
And in conjunction with this they are trying to push Rank Choice Voting all over the nation… The same boondoggle implemented in Maine to keep republicans from ever winning an election ever again
You know it’s downright ridiculous to think I robbed that bank so I could get 3 hots and a cot at Rykers. That Raskins dude is just loony.
“. . . remove Republican candidates for Congress from the ballots.”
The choice is now clear.
Either: “By the consent of the governed”
Or: Governed by those the Left anoints
Is it just me, or do the democrats have kind of a funny approach to protecting democracy?
Now I realize we’re not a democracy, I’m just using their terminology. however, if we were, I still don’t see what they’re doing as a valid means of protecting it.
Am I missing something here?
JAN 6 WAS A INSURRECTION?, A RIOT OR PROTEST? RIGHT! WHAT NONSENSE! IT TAKES PLACE BEFORE THE VERDICT OR ANSWER TO WHO WON THE ELECTION IS SUCH A STUPID BOGUS PHONEY IDEA THAT NO ONE WITH ANY COMMON SENSE SHOULD BUY! IMAGINE IF THE OUTCOME HAD TRUMP BEING THE PRESIDEN?T NO ONE KNEW WHEN THEY (THE TERRORIST)WENT INTO THE CAPITOL, IT WASN’T ANNOUNCED! THEY WERE “COUNTING THE VOTES”REMEMBER? THE DEMS STAGED IT TO HAVE THE COUNT INTERUPTED AN HAVE ALL THE FOCUS TAKEN AWAY FROM THE ELECTION FRUAD.TO THOSE WHO REMEMBER THE RODNEY KING RIOTS? THEY DIDN’T HAPPEN BEFORE THE OJ VERDICT WAS ANNOUNCED. I AM SICK TO MY STOMACH ABOUT HOW DUMB THE MEDIA MAKES US LOOK. THE GOODBYDEN ADMIN ALONG WITH GATES AND THE EVIL DR FUKY ARE LIKE THE BAD GUYS IN A OLD BATMAN EPISODE, WHAT’S NEXT MAYBE PUT TRUMP IN A HOUR GLASS UNTIL IT FILLS UP WITH SAND AND QUITS OR DIES.
Pull a Texas “bus” on them dems & remove them for election denying over the years
When SCOTUS does not do as you are rightly suggesting (based on facts, regarding the law), then what?
One does not hold them in high esteem like Professor Turley does.
Headed by the guy that allowed Citizens United and Obamacare to roll out, and is thought to have stop the December 2020 Texas challenge through bullying and screaming tactics, how do one believe this time will be much different?
If 5 judges (really 9) don’t make it very clear what the LAW IS, and how these people who brought these Marxist-like convictions because “I say so” and who also treading deep into waters they may regret dearly – what you get with dumb females with power that shows emotional thinking leads to irrational results (my opinion) – then, this Republic is gone.
Because, and you damn well know this by now, Biden’s administration will run over anyone in their way IF these FIVE or NINE JUDGES don’t let him know that. (And then need to point out how these partisan surrogates are working with him) and that he is NOT in THEIR GOOD GRACES.)
But I don’t expect that. I expect a mediocre, flimsy and tissue paper thin objection, but not enough to ERECT any barrier to DOJ/Secretaries of States or others (Mark Elias, Norm Eisen) from doing these cases again and again.
Frankly, all these people in DC – and their narcissistic and psychopath mass formed surrogates – need to take a long walk to China and stay there in a re-education camp until they expire. And by 1/20/25 Biden can move to Beijing and live as Xi’s pet.
All Demunists are totalitarians. It’s just that they used to keep quiet about it. Now, their masks are off.
Why doesnt 18 USC 2384 Seditious Conspiracy, bar someone convicted thereof, from holding any public office?
Perhaps one of our legal experts, like Dennis McInlyre, the night school king, would like to answer.
Come on, you bedwetters normally have all the answers. This is an easy one. Its right up there with who did hunter call from dubai.
Democracy? Where in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence or the founders letters is that word used?
Republicans need to declare the Democrat Party to be a terrorist group and disqualify ALL of their candidates.
💯 very close to comunist ideology. Brings to mind Cuba Venezuela Rusia. Why are Americans sleep at the wheel?
Democrats started the Civil War to keep humans enslaved, started the KKK to keep former slaves afraid of voting, swore allegiance to “Segregation Now – Segregation Tomorrow – Segregation Forever” to keep them from Democrat schools and neighborhoods, started the “Great Society” to keep them impoverished and indebted to the Democrat welfare state, started DEI to ensure their votes – while replacing them with illegal immigrants, and stole two Presidential elections 60 years apart.
If the Democrats want to continue on this path to start the Second Civil War they should recall first how the first American Civil War ended.
Next time we skip Reconstruction of the Democrat States. But to be honest, General Sherman’s destruction of the Confederate States pales in comparison to the damage already done to Democrat run cities…
You are stupid…and did not take college history
All true. Demunists – the party of slavery, racism, and totalitarianism since 1828.
Best comment! I might add, “those who forget or ignore history are doomed to repeat it”…
This lawfare by the American stasi left is palpable BS. Has our justice system become so pathetic and partisan compromised to let this garbage keep going ?. The full speed corruption under this current admin is cancerous to our body politic in America, let alone the world.
But really.
This isn’t political.
Not at all.