Banned from Office!
04/06/23 • 23 min
2 Listeners
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
Introducing: Bad Watchdog
The Continuous Action will return for a second season in the spring of 2023. In the meantime, check out the Project On Government Oversight's newest podcast, Bad Watchdog.
Bad Watchdog is about what happens when the watchdog tasked with overseeing the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country doesn’t do its job. In a six-part series, host Maren Machles and investigative reporters from the Project On Government Oversight uncover a shocking pattern of misconduct at the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, which resulted in a failure to investigate some of the most troubling events in recent history.
Listen to Bad Watchdog wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
Anything Goes
Members of Congress write their own rules — and those rules allow stock trades galore!
In this episode of The Continuous Action, host Walt Shaub dives into topic of congressional stock trading, outlining the problems with the practice and asking the question we’re all thinking: How is this legal? He’s joined by a member of Congress who’s leading a bipartisan coalition working to make sure it won’t stay legal for long.
The fact is, there’s no way for us to know what our elected representatives learn in closed-door government briefings, or whether they’re profiting from that knowledge. But what we do know is that members of Congress and their immediate families are free to buy and sell stocks while they’re in office, and some of them are turning quite a profit.
Even if they’re all following the rules, the lack of adequate guardrails is enough to shake the public’s faith. And it has: at least one poll shows that more than 70% of voters favor banning congressional stock trading.
To learn more, Walt talks with Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) about the quest to ban congressional stock trading. Spanberger leads a bipartisan coalition of members, including Representative Chip Roy (R-TX), which is fighting to put a congressional stock trading ban in place. They may not agree on much else, but these dozens of members of Congress agree that time has come to stop the trades.
For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action
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Special thanks to Caroline Kenney and Jason Linkins, whose voices appear at the top of this episode.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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