The Democrat lieutenant governor of California is calling on the state’s top election official to “explore every legal option” to remove former President Donald Trump from next year’s ballot — but her appeals to the Constitution don’t hold up.
“The constitution [sic] is clear,” Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis wrote Wednesday. “[Y]ou must be 40 years old and not be an insurrectionist.”
The minimum age requirement for the presidency outlined by the Constitution, however, is 35.
Kounalakis’ letter was written on the heels of a radical decision handed down by the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday to ban the Republican front-runner from the 2024 ballot over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. In a 4-3 decision, the court, which is made up of justices entirely appointed by Democrats, removed ballot access from the former president, citing a Civil War-era provision barring candidates who “engaged in insurrection” from elected office.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the justices wrote.
Trump’s attorneys have pledged to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.
Shortly after the Colorado Supreme Court handed down the ruling, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley ripped the decision on Fox News as “hands down the most anti-democratic opinion I’ve seen in my life.”
“To call this an insurrection, for the purposes of disqualification, would create a slippery slope for every state in the Union,” Turley said.
After a snap impeachment failed to convict the outgoing president in 2021, Democrats are still trying to use the riot to bar their top political opponent from a possible return to the White House next year. Democrats from California to Michigan have now called on their state election officials to legally nullify Trump’s third presidential run by keeping him off the ballot.
Trump, meanwhile, still faces 91 state and federal charges as Democrats simultaneously unleash a campaign strategy of aggressive lawfare to keep Republicans out of the White House. Although corrupt media scaremongers have said Trump’s second term will be a dictatorship, President Joe Biden has more in common with a strongman like Russian leader Vladimir Putin than the Republican front-runner. Trump’s top political opponent for 2024 isn’t his Republican rivals who trail the former president by more than 53 points in the polls. It’s the Department of Justice run by none other than Joe Biden, and other left-wing activists in black robes.
