Jamie Raskin says Trump is ‘disqualified’ from the presidency

Rep Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that former president Donald Trump is “disqualified” from seeking the presidency.

Host Dana Bash quoted former Arkansas governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson saying that the 14th amendment of the US Constitution disqualified the former president.

Mr Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law at American University, said that the third section of the 14th amendment says that no person who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” can serve as “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state.”

“And this was added after the Civil War as a general constitutional principle and we have to abide by it,” he said.

Mr Raskin served as a member of the select committee investigating the January 6 riot and was the lead impeachment manager for Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial for his incitement of the insurrection. He noted how the House voted to impeach Mr Trump with 10 Republicans, while seven Republican Senators joined every member of the Senate Democratic caucus to convict Mr Trump, though the number fell short of the requisite two-thirds needed to convict a president.

“So I think you've got robust bicameral, bipartisan majorities that have already established this is a fact,” Mr Raskin said.

Mr Hutchinson, who served as an impeachment manager during the trial of former president Bill Clinton, said during the first Republican presidential primary debate that he would not support Mr Trump were he the nominee because of his actions on January 6.

“More people are understanding the importance of that, including conservative legal scholars who say he maybe disqualified under the 14th Amendment from being president again as a result of the insurrection,” he said.

Recently, two conservative legal scholars – William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael Paulsen at the University of St Thomas School of Law – authored an article in a forthcoming edition of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review arguing that the 14th amendment “disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.” Both men are members of the conservative Federalist Society.