Raskin: Trump can’t hold office again under 14th Amendment

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Thursday he thinks the U.S. Constitution “could not be any clearer” that former President Trump is ineligible to hold public office again under the 14th Amendment.

“This is a chance for these [Supreme Court] justices to show that they really mean it when they talk about textualism, when they talk about originalism. The plain text of the Constitution could not be any clearer,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

“If Donald Trump is not disqualified from holding office again after what he did on January 6 in the weeks leading up to it, then who is disqualified? Why would they read an entire provision out of the constitution?” Raskin added. “So this is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.”

Raskin’s remarks come as Trump has pledged to appeal a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court that declared him ineligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot.

The ruling cites Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that says former public officials are ineligible to hold public office again if, “having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States,” they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

In the interview Thursday, Raskin said the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling “strikes me as a very straightforward textualist application of the Constitution. The language is totally plain. The Colorado Supreme Court gave it a plain reading.”

“If you’ve sworn an oath to support the Constitution and you violate that oath by engaging in insurrection or rebellion, you can never hold office again, unless the Congress votes by a two-thirds margin, to essentially, reinstate your eligibility. That’s what the Constitution itself says,” he continued.

He said this section of the 14th Amendment was originally proposed to be much broader, banning those officials in question from voting, not just running for public office. The language would also apply to anyone who engaged in the Confederate secession, not just insurrection or rebellion.

Raskin said Republicans in the Senate at the time decided to narrow the language “down to the hardcore bulls-eye of the most egregious offenders” and drafted the language that ultimately made it into the Constitution.

“So Donald Trump can certainly vote,” Raskin added. “It’s just that he can’t hold office again, under this measure, and I should say that the case was brought by Republicans about the Republican primary in Colorado, under a provision added to the Constitution by the radical Republicans of the 19th century.”