It's Happening: State Board Says It Could Move to Disqualify Firebrand GOP Rep's Re-Election Bid Over Jan. 6
The Democrats just got a little bit closer to one of their more divisive wish-list items: Weaponizing an obscure part of the Constitution written to deal with former members of the Confederacy and aiming it at sitting Republicans in Congress.
In a court filing Monday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections argued it has the power to block GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn from seeking reelection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment because of what CNN subtly termed “his role in the January 6 insurrection.”
The election board’s filing is an unsettling development in a case that could, if applied more broadly, disqualify hundreds of elected Republicans from running for office — and potentially stop Donald Trump from running in 2024. (We’ve kept tabs on these problematic developments here at The Western Journal — and we’ll continue to report on liberal efforts to abuse the Constitution for their electoral gain. You can help us bring America the truth by subscribing.)
The case started when a liberal group filed a notice with the board of elections last month challenging Cawthorn’s candidacy. In response, Cawthorn filed a lawsuit in federal court against members of the board of elections, in their public capacity, seeking to block the board from hearing the case, CNN reported.
Among other points, Cawthorn’s suit argues that the Constitution gives only the House of Representatives the power to that a member cannot be seated.
“North Carolina cannot invade or frustrate the House of Representative’s ability to make its independent, final judgment of the qualifications of a Member,” the lawsuit states.
On Monday, the board filed a motion with the court asking it to dismiss Cawthorn’s lawsuit, arguing that its powers extend to judging the qualifications of political candidates beyond simply verifying they meet age and residency requirements.
“The State does not judge the qualifications of the elected members of the U.S. House of Representative. It polices candidate qualifications prior to the elections,” the board wrote in the filing, according to The Hill.
“In doing so, as indicated above, States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
For those who are curious, according to its website, the board of elections is officially nonpartisan, but its five members are appointed by the governor, with no more than three members being from one political party. In the current case, all five board members have been appointed since Democrat Roy Cooper took office.
Its chairman is a Democrat and the majority of its members are Democrats. That’s the board that wants to judge Republican Madison Cawthorn, for his support of Republican Donald Trump.
The provision of the 14th Amendment the board cited was meant to apply to former Confederate officials who had taken an oath to the United States and then subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
It forbade former Conferederates from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” They could only do so if a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress cleared them.
In the chaotic aftermath of Jan. 6, Democrats looking for creative ways to hang the Capitol riot like a millstone around the neck of the Republican Party immediately floated using Section 3 against House members who didn’t vote to certify the election results.
However, the most prominent and sweeping initiative to accomplish that — Democrat Rep. Cori Bush’s House Resolution 25, which attempted to get “the Committee on Ethics to investigate, and issue a report on, whether any and all actions taken by Members of the 117th Congress who sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election violated their oath of office to uphold the Constitution or the Rules of the House of Representatives, and should face sanction, including removal from the House of Representatives” — didn’t go anywhere in the House and would have had less traction in the Senate. (Not that Rep. Bush isn’t still pushing for it, though.)
We should commemorate the 1-year-anniversary of January 6th by passing my H.Res 25 to investigate and expel the members of Congress who helped incite the violent insurrection at our Capitol.
— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) December 27, 2021
However, just because you go big and fail doesn’t mean you go home — not if you’re a Democrat in contemporary America.
In December, top Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias predicted, “Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.
“We may even see litigation,” Elias tweeted.
My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.
We may even see litigation. pic.twitter.com/pF7P2fw0kn
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 21, 2021
And quelle surprise, litigation we are seeing.
The challenge to Cawthorn’s candidacy was filed by a group called Free Speech for People — a name so lazy it’s as if its leaders want America to think they’re astroturfed.
Cawthorn isn’t just the test case for Section 3 because he’s a controversy magnet. On Jan. 4, 2021, the pro-Trump Republican tweeted that Trump’s Jan. 6 rally was “fast approaching” and that “the fate of a nation rests on our shoulders, yours and mine.
“Let’s show Washington that our backbones are made of steel and titanium. It’s time to fight,” he wrote.
January 6th is fast approaching, the future of this Republic hinges on the actions of a solitary few.
Get ready, the fate of a nation rests on our shoulders, yours and mine. Let’s show Washington that our backbones are made of steel and titanium.
It’s time to fight.
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) January 4, 2021
Furthermore, during the rally, he called members of Congress “cowards” if they were voting to certify the Electoral College results awarding the president to Joe Biden.
Cawthorn was also named in an Oct. 24 Rolling Stone article that identified several GOP representatives whose offices participated in planning the Jan. 6 protest rally.
There was quite a bit of sound and fury around that piece, but it signified nothing: None of the representatives or their staff members were accused of plotting the Capitol riot.
Obviously, though, Cawthorn’s case isn’t meant to be a one-off, a single member of Congress who went so far on social media and at the Jan. 6 rally that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment needed to be invoked against him.
Rather, it’s a foot in a door that the left wants to bust wide open.
Here’s John Nichols, national correspondent for left-wing media stalwart The Nation, writing last month:
“Ethics Committee members in the House and the Senate should also consider appropriate actions that might be taken with regard to the eight senators and 139 representatives who, after the January 6 rioters left the Capitol, voted to sustain one or both of the objections to the election results that were under consideration when the Trump supporters attacked. Did they not give aid and comfort to the coup attempt by supporting the program of the insurrectionists? Should they not be held to account?”
Getting state boards of elections to disqualify almost 150 Republicans by using an obscure portion of the Constitution meant to apply to Confederate officials isn’t going to happen, if just because of the scope of the legal effort that would be required.
However, the fact liberals want even one disqualified — and are making a serious legal fight to do so — should worry every American, particularly since this tactic can be used against its real target Donald Trump.
If he chooses to run for reelection, Trump would almost certainly win the Republican nomination. And given the 75 million votes he attracted in 2020, he would be a serious possibility to win. Any success by Democrats to disqualify candidates based on their perceived connection to the violence of Jan. 6 would no doubt be used to try to forestall Trump from even trying.
We may disagree as a country over the propriety of what those legislators said or the correctness of the votes they cast in January of 2021.
But when Americans disagree over whether they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” by votes or by words that plainly were neither insurrectionary or rebellious, we’ve lost the plot in a dangerous way.
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