Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in the wake of the Civil War, reads: “No person shall be a 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, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Representatives of the corporate state are attempting to use this section to prevent Trump from running for the presidency. Before getting to the punchline of the present essay, I want to share the section following Section 3 to provide more context and make obvious that this section of the Fourteenth Amendment is referring to those who fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. I italicize the relevant passages. To wit, Section 4 reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
The Fourteenth Amendment is plainly referring to individuals who participated in the insurrection and rebellion against the United States during the American Civil War. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment in particular aimed to disqualify individuals who had taken an oath to support the US Constitution but had participated in or supported the Confederacy during the Civil War from holding certain public offices. It was a measure aimed at ensuring that those who had been part of the rebellion against the United States would face consequences in terms of their eligibility for public office. However, it also provided a mechanism for Congress to remove this disability for specific individuals through a two-thirds majority vote, allowing for some reconciliation and the possibility of reintegration into political life after the war.
Context aside, Trump was moreover acquitted in the Senate on charges of insurrection. The double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime. I italicize the relevant clause: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Even though the insurrection clause of the amendment concerns those who rebelled against the republic during the Civil War, stretching it to fit the case of Trump wouldn’t work; Trump’s acquittal means that the President is immune from any punishment regarding his actions on January 6, 2021, in which he called on those in attendance to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol to protest a rigged and stolen election. Like every other citizen of the United States, Trump has a First Amendment right to voice his opinion about the election, as do his followers to hear his opinion and to peaceably assemble to seek redress of their grievances.
It is problematic, then, that on August 1st of this year, former President Donald Trump faced a four-count felony indictment for his involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, leading to the violent riot at the US Capitol. The Justice Department boast that it had taken action to hold the President accountable for what the propagandists typically describe as an unprecedented effort to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power and undermine American democracy. This marked the third criminal case against Trump to that point (there are now four with the indictments brought by Fulton country of Georgia, which I will briefly review below). The indictment outlines a months-long campaign of spreading “false information” about the election outcome. Trump was also accused of exploiting the violence to further delay the certification of votes confirming his defeat.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith whose office. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” The indictment encompasses allegations of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and violation of a post-Civil War Reconstruction Era statute concerning civil rights. This statute criminalizes conspiring to infringe upon rights protected by the Constitution, specifically, in this instance, the right to vote. These are new (albeit bogus) charges but the indictment has the appearance of a second go at Trump for insurrection.
Recall the article of impeachment, which carried the title “Article of Impeachment for Incitement of Insurrection,” for it seems to include much of the spirit of Smith’s indictment:
“In his conduct while President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:
“On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’ He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.
“President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
Democrats like to make a big deal about how Trump is twice impeached, but impeachment is not a conviction but a charging mechanism, analogous to an indictment or information. Trump has been twice acquitted on charges brought against him by the same party that’s attempting to keep him off the ballot by organizing four indictments at federal and state levels. He was first acquitted in the case of his phone call to the Ukraine government concerning the criminal actions of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, it has become clear that Trump was right to make the call. The facts show that the Bidens were engaged in a corrupt money laundering scheme, bribery, and interference in the internal affairs of another country in Ukraine and that Trump in his capacity as chief magistrate of the executive branch of the US government was well within his authority. He was acquitted in the Senate of the second impeachment almost a month after he peacefully transferred the Office of the Presidency to his successor Joe Biden.
Determined to get Trump, prosecutors in various jurisdictions have indicted the President on various charges. In Georgia state court, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump on thirteen criminal counts, alleging his involvement in attempting to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. This charge appears to have already been covered in the article of impeachment of which Trump was acquitted. A federal grand jury in Washington, DC indicted Trump on four counts in a criminal case related to his alleged efforts to subvert the will of the voters and interfere with the 2020 presidential election results. In Florida, a federal grand jury has issued a forty-count indictment against Trump. This indictment pertains to charges of obstructing an investigation and his unlawful retention of classified documents following his presidential term. In a New York State Court, Trump faces a thirty-four-count indictment related to hush money payments made to an adult film star during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In the first two cases, Trump was pursuing his legal right to dispute the results of an election. In the second case, Trump is protected by the Presidential Records Act, as I have discussed elsewhere on this blog. In the fourth case, a court awarded Donald Trump tens of thousands of dollars from Stormy Daniels in failed defamation suit. The underlying facts of the Daniels case are the same that are now being brought against Trump in New York State (Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was paid by Trump’s legal team to avoid going public with the story ahead of the 2016 presidential election). This is lawfare. What Democrats are doing is a serious threat to the democratic institutions and processes of the republic. This is the type of election interference and rigging that one sees in fascist states and third world countries in the periphery of the world system.
Why are they so panicked about Trump? Trump is an outsider. The corporate state wants to a candidate for the Republican Party who is an insider. Rank-and-file Republicans, conservatives, don’t want the status quo. They’re antiestablishment. They want to return to democratic-republicanism. The populist-nationalist movement is a very powerful movement, and it’s not going away anytime soon. The elite in Washington understand this. They realize now that there’s going to be no Republican who can stand in Trump’s way to reelection. So they’ve turned to lawfare.
This is the way totalitarian societies operate. The administrative state had to remove Trump—and they have to keep him from winning the presidency again—in order to keep power. The desire to destroy Trump was clear from the disinformation campaigns the Democrats in conjunction with deep state operatives and legacy and social media ran from the start of Trump’s presidency. The bogus claim that Trump stole the 2016 election. The Russian collusion hoax. The Steele Dossier. The color revolutions that booked ended Trump’s first term. When Steve Bannon and Rudolph Giuliani got their hands on the Hunter Biden laptop, operatives of the deep state signed a letter saying it was Russian disinformation. Social media censored stories about the laptop. To prevent the dismantling of the administrative state and the revelations such a dismantling will reveal, elites are now trying to throw the leader of the populist movement in prison.
Trump has noted that this is not really about him. It’s about what he represents, namely populist-nationalism. The globalists have to stop resurgent democratic-republicanism and classical liberal freedoms. The MAGA movement is a monkey-wrench thrown into the machinery of transnationalization. The managed decline of the American republic must continue. But Trump is the personification of that movement. So Trump must be imprisoned not just to prevent his return but to demoralize the people. So far, Trump becomes more popular with every indictment. If he is sentenced to prison there is reason to be concerned about the popular backlash. I hate having to say this, but I cannot rule out the possibility of civil war in the near future. Perhaps that’s precisely what the transnationalists are cooking up.
freedom and reason 