The former president, who faces trial for attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win, ominously warned that 2024 could be the last U.S. election if he is disqualified.
Former President Donald Trump – who’s been charged in two separate federal indictments with conspiring to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss – spoke out Thursday on legal battles to remove his name from state ballots for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and ominously warned that 2024 may be the last election the U.S. ever has if he is disqualified.
“If crooked Joe and the Democrats get away with removing my name from the ballot then there will never be a free election in America again,” Trump said in a fundraising email, referring to President Joe Biden and the legal challenges seeking to disqualify him from running. “We will have become a dictatorship where your president is chosen for you. You will no longer have a vote, or certainly won’t have a meaningful vote.”
His remarks come on the fourth day of a hearing in Denver, where legal experts and scholars have been sparring over whether the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol qualified as an insurrection and whether Trump’s actions – including pressuring state officials to reverse the election results and telling armed supporters ahead of the riot to “fight like hell” and encouraging them to go march on the Capitol – disqualify him from running for president in 2024.
The lawsuit, based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, on behalf of six Republican and independent voters, including a former GOP leader in the Colorado legislature.
Section 3 of the amendment, known as the insurrection clause, is a Civil War-era relic meant to prevent Confederate soldiers from gaining office and undermining Reconstruction efforts. It states that no one can hold office who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution but then engaged in an insurrection or provided help to enemies of the United States.
A flurry of lawsuits in Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, New Hampshire and New Jersey are testing that section of the amendment and whether it disqualifies Trump from running for president, given his involvement in the violent insurrection at the Capitol.
Trump, the leading GOP presidential nominee for the 2024 election, called the legal challenges to his candidacy “fake” and alleged that the lawsuits are trying to “illegally remove my name from the ballot.”
The legal drama plays out as the former president, who was twice impeached while in office, faces 91 criminal charges stemming from four indictments and a $250 million fraud lawsuit. He has maintained innocence on all fronts and pleaded not guilty to the charges. In one case in Georgia, Trump is among 19 codefendants accused of a broad conspiracy to overturn the state’s election results in which three of his former attorneys have admitted their involvement and pleaded guilty thus far.
While constitutional law experts are divided on the 14th Amendment issue, many say there’s legitimacy to Trump’s claim that keeping the leading Republican nominee for president off the ballot is “simply wrong and un-American.” And nearly all agree – even those who believe that the arguments for disqualification are strong – that the challenges face an uphill climb in every state, largely due to this being uncharted territory.
Indeed, a panel of judges in Minnesota’s Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday on the issue and seemed wary about the prospects of deciding his fate.
“Should we do it? Even if we could do it and we can do it?” Chief Justice Natalie Hudson asked at one point, noting that the issue will likely wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
But what started as a widely dismissed – even wacky – thought exercise has survived several legal hurdles in the last month.
The attempts to keep Trump off the ballot are an extraordinary new narrative in the already chaotic circus that envelops the former president and his reelection efforts. And they seem to have prodded the already bombastic Trump to appeal directly to supporters, continuing to spin his martyrdom narrative while setting up a scenario in which any outcome other than his election would be considered bogus.
“It may also be the last election we ever have if this election doesn’t work,” he said in a video included in an email blasted out to his loyal MAGA base. “If this election is rigged and stolen, if bad things happen, our country will not survive.”
“We must win in 2024. If we don’t win, we will not have a country.”
