by Igor Derysh
Senior News Editor
Salon
Published December 29, 2023 9:08AM (EST)
https://www.salon.com/2023/12/29/maga-m ... ff-ballot/
Maine’s top election official on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, issued the decision after presiding over an administrative hearing earlier this month on Trump’s eligibility after a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers challenged his candidacy, according to CNN. Bellows halted her decision pending an appeal to a state court, which Trump’s team vowed to file.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote. “Democracy is sacred … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
Maine is the second state to remove Trump from the primary ballot after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot. That ruling has similarly been stayed pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Similar efforts have failed in other states and most legal experts believe the U.S. Supreme Court will settle the issue for the entire country.
Bellows wrote that she has a legal obligation to comply with the 14th Amendment and remove Trump.
“The oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine’s election laws … is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek,” she said.
Bellows noted that evidence showed that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack “occurred at the behest of” Trump – and that the US Constitution “does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government.”
“The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Bellows wrote. “I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
Trump has yet to comment on the removal but took to Truth Social Thursday night to direct his followers to Bellows’ official website.
Trump’s campaign accused Bellows of being a “virulent leftist” who has now “decided to interfere in the presidential election.”
“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” said Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman for Trump, who has repeatedly sought to throw out votes in areas he lost and argued that former President Barack Obama was ineligible to be president over a false claim that he was born in Kenya.
The pro-Trump MAGA War Room posted a photo of Bellows posing with President Joe Biden, questioning whether followers believed she is “impartial.”
MAGA War Room
@MAGAIncWarRoom
Do you think Maine's Democrat Secretary of State is impartial?
5:24 PM · Dec 28, 2023
“I stand with President Trump against the Left’s blatant attack on our democracy,” tweeted Trump ally Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
“The Maine Secretary of State’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot is reckless and partisan. I am confident the Supreme Court will reverse it,” wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
Some Trump opponents also criticized the decision. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie warned that the move will make Trump a “martyr.”
“This should be decided by the voters of the United States. It should not be decided by courts. And the fact is, while there may be — people may think there's a justification for doing this — it's not good in our democracy,” he told CNN. "In the end, Donald Trump should be defeated by the voters at the polls and defeated by someone like me, who is willing to tell the truth about him. That's the way we defeat him and we end the scourge of Donald Trump in our party and our country,” added Christie, who is polling at about 3% nationally.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig argued that the matter is “not that simple” and may be determined by “who gets to decide and by what process.”
“I think there’s a question there with regard to what Maine did, because if you look at the hearing, and she details this in the ruling, they heard from one fact witness, a law professor. She based her ruling on a lot of documents, but also YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court,” he said Thursday, according to Mediaite. “She’s not a lawyer, by the way. It’s a smartly written decision, clearly consulted with lawyers, but this is an unelected– she’s chosen by the state legislature. Chosen, elected by the legislature, but not democratically elected.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, who served as Democratic counsel during Trump’s first impeachment, argued that Bellows’ decision was “correct” and “historic.”
"I see this as a proud moment in our democracy," he said. "This is how our checks and balances are supposed to work,” he said, adding: "As wrong as some people are saying... that its anti-democratic — it is never against American democracy to apply the United States Constitution."
Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean warned that Trump is “in trouble wherever this is raised and addressed."
"I think the Maine decision is very solid," Dean said. "It was fully briefed. There is ample due process in this proceeding. And they just lost by a straight, honest reading of the 14th Amendment."
Dean acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to have the final say but added that he wants to see “those strict constructionists and originalists get around that language” of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
"How are they going to do it?” he questioned. “I don't know... I don't know what they can do with it other than take him off the ballot.