Banned from Office!

Is Donald Trump constitutionally disqualified from running for president?

In this episode of The Continuous Action, Walt Shaub and Virginia Heffernan examine a provision of the Constitution that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. The “disqualification clause” was ratified with the rest of the 14th Amendment just after the Civil War, and it hadn’t been used in the last hundred years — until a recent court case.

In 2022, a group of New Mexico citizens filed a suit alleging that a local county commissioner who was involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol should be disqualified from holding office. A state judge agreed, finding that the commissioner’s actions on January 6 qualified as having “engaged in ... insurrection.” The judge banned him from ever holding office again.

To learn more about the case, and what it might mean for others involved in the events of January 6, Virginia and Walt talk to POGO’s own Liz Hempowicz, who co-authored a report on applications of the disqualification clause. They also catch up with one of the lawyers who tried the Griffin case, Donald Sherman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Listen in to learn more about how this important part of the 14th Amendment works, who it might affect, what happened in the New Mexico case, and what’s coming next for candidate Trump.

For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action

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