Cases for, against barring Trump from Republican primary ballot – Spectrum News
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Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows heard arguments Friday in a public hearing regarding challenges requesting she bar former President Donald Trump’s name from appearing on the Republican primary ballot.
The hearing is in response to three separate letters to Bellows from Maine residents Kimberley Rosen, Thomas Saviello and Mary Anne Royal, Portland attorney Paul Gordon and former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling.
On Friday, Bellows heard arguments from the challengers, along with Trump attorneys Scott Gessler, Gary Lawkowski and Benjamin Hartwell, a Maine-based attorney and former Gorham town councilor.
The testimony in favor of the challenges focused on allegations that Trump endorsed or even encouraged the incursion on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, and insisting that he won the 2020 election.
During testimony, Royal avoided the question of whether Trump actually committed treason. That issue, she said, was irrelevant. What mattered to her, she said, was that Trump took the presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” when he first took office in 2017.
“There is no doubt that Donald J. Trump willfully violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution while he was president of the United States,” she said. “No person who has taken that oath of office, and then violated that oath so egregiously, can ever be trusted to hold public office again.”
Gordon addressed Trump’s claims that he was, in fact, reelected in November of 2020, which means that constitutional term limits prevent him from running again. That means, he said, Trump has two choices: Either he abandon his 2020 presidential campaign or acknowledge that he lost in 2020.
“When a candidate repeatedly, intentionally and publicly makes a factual representation that, if true, would disqualify him from the office he seeks, I don’t think we can simply close our eyes and pretend he isn’t saying that,” Gordon said.
Brunswick attorney Benjamin Gaines, who represented Rosen, Saviello and Strimling, gave a more complex presentation, including video exhibits. Gaines argued that Trump encouraged the protests that occurred on Jan. 6, amounting to an insurrection against the United States. This, he said, according to Article 3 of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution makes Trump ineligible to run for President. The article states that “No person” can run for office if said person “shall have engaged in insurrection against the same.”
Gaines showed a series of videos featuring Trump speaking at campaign rallies and press conferences, both before and after being elected president in 2016. The videos showed Trump speaking out against protestors, including one video where he says of one protestor, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
“This shows a pattern of behavior by President Trump where he encouraged violent behavior on behalf of his supporters at his rallies,” Gaines said.
Gessler argued that similar appeals to secretaries of state in other states, including New Hampshire, Michigan, Colorado and Georgia, all resulted in denying requests to remove Trump from the ballot.
Gessler flatly denied that Trump was involved in the Jan. 6 riots.
“We strongly contest the arguments that President Trump ever engaged in insurrection,” he said.
Further, Gessler said the same article Gaines cited in the 14th Amendment gives Congress the right to make a decision on whether or not that disqualification can be waived. That suggests, he said, that it is up to Congress to resolve such an issue when and if Trump is elected. Bellows, he argued, doesn’t have the right to make the decision by removing Trump from the ballot.
“This tribunal, this agency doesn’t have authority because it requires congressional action,” he said. “(The constitution) doesn’t allow states to do it, and it certainly doesn’t allow administrative agencies,” he said.
Maine law required the hearing to happen within five days of Bellows receiving the letters, but at the hearing she noted that attorneys for both sides would have until the end of the day next week on Tuesday, Dec. 19 to review exhibits and submit written responses. Bellows would make a decision regarding the challenges at a later date.