“Pompous assholes” cannot remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) exclusivity told Breitbart News, recalling her previous legal battle to remain on the 2022 Republican primary ballot.
The media, academia, and Democrat-aligned groups, recently launched an idea to keep Trump off state primary ballots. They argue that under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is disqualified for running for president because he allegedly “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies” during the January 6 riot.
“We have to remind all these pompous assholes in the mainstream media that you guys tried this once and you’ve failed — because I won my case, and there is precedent there,” Greene told Breitbart News.
During the 2022 GOP primary season, a top Georgia election official said Greene would remain on the primary ballot after a judge rejected a Democrat-devised plan to remove her over alleged actions connected to January 6.
Former President Donald Trump steps off his plane as he arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Democrats did not establish that Greene “engaged in insurrection or rebellion … or [gave] aid or comfort to the enemies” under the 14th Amendment, the judge wrote.
Greene said her victory in court, based upon free speech, will aid Trump’s chances of winning the Republican primary and challenging President Joe Biden.
“Before my primary in 2022, they tried to remove my name off the ballot under the same clause — the exact same thing they’re doing to President Trump. And I won that case,” she said.
“I had to sit on the witness stand. I think it was like four to five hours defending myself being charged with insurrection. It was unbelievable,” she said. “It cost me about a million dollars in legal fees.”
“If I had lost, they would have removed my name off the ballot, and I could not have been reelected under the 14th Amendment, Article 3. And it’s exactly what they’re trying to do to President Trump,” she continued.
“So, my case is precedent. I’ve already won it,” she added. “This will help President Trump win his cases.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks on the floor of the House Chamber during a reconvening of a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Democrats are working to disqualify Trump in at least three states: Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire.
“I’m talking every day with colleagues about this — we’re all recognizing that our decisions that we make may, in some cases, be the first but won’t be the last, and there may be multiple decision points throughout the course of the election cycle,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson recently told ABC News.
“So, I think the public needs to be prepared for this to be an ongoing issue. That is, it has several resolution points and evolution points throughout the cycle,” she added.
Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge, argued in the Atlantic that the unproven legal argument to keep Trump off the GOP ballot is valid:
As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.
Trump’s campaign spokesperson pushed back against the argument as “stretching law beyond recognition” without legal basis.
“The people who are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and D.C.,” a spokesperson told Axios. “There is no legal basis for this effort except in the minds of those who are pushing it.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
