Well, here is something interesting.

Apparently, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment allows the attorney general (and then, we suspect the courts) to bar anyone from running for president if that person has engaged in insurrection.

It would be the ultimate in political calls, and it’s possible that the MAGA violence (should it work) might make it not worth the trouble (literally). Once again we’d see the nation literally bullied by the minority if Garland held back.

But if he went forward, Juan Williams thinks that Garland might be successful. According to The Hill:

But Garland has the facts on his side. The facts say Trump tried to stage a coup. Prohibition on future political bids by a coup leader — someone “engaged in insurrection” — fits with what is now publicly known about Trump’s efforts to remain in office after he lost in 2020.

By all rights and by the plain wording of the 14th Amendment, Trump certainly qualifies and Garland would be right in doing so. The question again becomes can we actually live as a government of law, not “men” (people).

“Just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen,” Trump told Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, in a December phone call, according to notes on the call made by Rosen’s deputy.

This is a key quote, one that is already before the Senate, Dick Durbin said the testimony showed incredible “personal involvement” by Donald Trump. Trump had attempted to get Barr to find fraud before Rosen came into the job and went after Georgia’s secretary of state Raffensperger.

And when Rosen did not follow Trump’s suggestion, the former president apparently considered ousting him and inserting a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, who according to a recent report from the Washington Post “was willing to push Trump’s false claims of election fraud.”

It is not just the January 6th insurrection, it encompasses all the acts of insurrection prior to the attempted coup on the Capitol. Again, if we were a nation of laws, it really would be a no-brainer. But we’re a nation bullied by the minority, not all that different than high school, just with much higher stakes.

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