Maine bans Trump from state ballot
WASHINGTON—The Democrat-led US state of Maine on Thursday blocked former president Donald Trump from its Republican presidential primary ballot, becoming the second state to disqualify him over his alleged role in the January 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
Maine’s top election official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, said in her ruling that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 “occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President.”
Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump incited an insurrection when he claimed voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
“The US Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government and (Maine law) requires me to act in response,” read the ruling, which came in response to challenges filed by a handful of Maine voters.
Lawyers for Trump have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 incident were protected by his right to free speech.
Maine joins Colorado, where the state supreme court earlier this month found Trump ineligible for the presidency, moves that will certainly be challenged in the US Supreme Court.
14th Amendment
The rulings in both states invoked the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which bars from office anyone formerly sworn to protect the country who later engages in insurrection or rebellion.
Trump has neither been charged with nor proven to have engaged in insurrection related to the Jan. 6 attack.
Similar attempts to disqualify Trump in other states have been rejected.
The top court in Michigan, a pivotal battleground state in the general election, declined on Wednesday to hear a case seeking to disqualify Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
Trump’s campaign quickly slammed Bellows’ ruling as “attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter” and called her a “virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat.”
“These partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement, accusing President Joe Biden and Democrats of “relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power.”
Cheung said Trump would appeal the ruling.
Fellow Republicans jumped to Trump’s defense, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who is also seeking the party’s nomination.
“It opens up Pandora’s Box. Can you have a Republican Secretary of State disqualify Biden from the ballot?” he said.
The Maine decision comes as Trump remains the front-running Republican candidate to challenge Biden in next year’s vote.
‘No question about it’
Trump has been leading Biden in recent polls—albeit within the margin of error.
Biden has stepped up his attacks on his predecessor in recent weeks, saying Trump “certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it, none, zero.”
He recently told a campaign reception that “the greatest threat Trump poses is to our democracy. Because if we lose, we lose everything.”
The president described Trump as “sitting there, watching it unfold on TV as a mob attacked the Capitol” in the assault by the Republican’s supporters on January 6, 2021, aimed at overturning Trump’s loss to Biden.
Trump continues to claim that he is the rightful winner of the 2020 vote.
He is scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March for conspiring to overturn the results of the election, and also faces racketeering charges in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to upend the election results in the southern state after his defeat.
Maine and Colorado hold their nominating contests on March 5—also known as “Super Tuesday”—when voters in more than a dozen states, including populous California and Texas, go to the polls. —reports by AFP, REUTERS
