Jan. 6 Panel Backs Trump Ban With Bills That Won’t Go Anywhere

Zoe Tillman
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- The Jan. 6 panel recommended Congress take steps to bar Donald Trump from holding office again, but legislation it cites failed to advance in the US House this year and will almost certainly go nowhere when Republicans take over next month.

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That’s no problem for advocacy groups that have vowed to challenge Trump’s constitutional eligibility to run for president in 2024. They say the value of the House committee’s work isn’t in any future legislation, but in laying out the case for applying a post-Civil War ban on insurrectionists holding office under state rules that already exist.

“For any secretary of state or chief election official reading this report, they should see that there’s a clear mandate here for them to use the evidence in that report and apply Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to bar Donald Trump from their state ballot,” said John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People, one of several groups that have announced plans to try to disqualify the former president in multiple states.

The Jan. 6 committee’s report, in an appendix devoted to proposed reforms, urged Congress to consider creating a “formal mechanism” for evaluating whether people singled out by the committee should be barred from serving. It didn’t explain precisely what that mechanism should be.

14th Amendment

“The committee believes that those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and then, on Jan. 6th, engaged in insurrection can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office,” reads a passage on page 690 of the 814-page report.

The committee didn’t say outright that Congress had to step in for Trump to be disqualified under the 14th Amendment, but experts have warned of legal chaos if efforts to keep him off ballots unfold in multiple states with varying rules — especially if they result in different outcomes.

Marcy Kahn, a former New York State appellate judge who led a New York City Bar Association task force to study the issue, previously told Bloomberg that “it really would be a constitutional crisis.”

The Jan. 6 report cited two measures introduced by two Democratic representatives, Jamie Raskin of Maryland — a member of the Jan. 6 committee – and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. Those include a resolution declaring that anyone who tried to undermine the 2020 election results is disqualified under the 14th Amendment, and a bill giving the Justice Department and private citizens the option of suing in federal court to block a candidate from appearing on a ballot.

Two other Democrats, Representatives Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Jackie Speier, of California introduced a similar bill empowering the Justice Department to take action; neither would require government lawyers to go to court. Earlier this month, Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island offered a measure declaring Trump ineligible to hold any office. It had a section making clear it didn’t change any existing process for enforcing the disqualification.

House Changing Hands

None of the bills made it to the hearing stage in the Democratic-led House. Republican leaders set to take control of the chamber next month have been highly critical of the Jan. 6 panel’s work, dooming any effort to revive legislation it backed.

Advocates, however, insist they don’t need Congress to do anything in order to bring, and win, state ballot challenges to Trump under the 14th Amendment. The language of Section 3 doesn’t call for congressional action or a conviction for the federal felony crime of insurrection. The Project on Government Oversight released a report in November concluding that the “legal infrastructure” already was in place.

No matter what Congress does, “Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is already binding on the states to keep insurrectionists, including Donald Trump, off of their state ballots,” Bonifaz said.

The committee’s work can help though, advocates say. The evidence laid out in the report – or a conviction, should the Justice Department successfully act on the panel’s criminal referral of Trump – “can make an even more ironclad case,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another group that’s vowed to pursue 14th Amendment challenges.

Beyond Trump, several groups are urging the new Congress to enforce the insurrection disqualification by refusing to seat members who backed his efforts to undermine President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory – specifically, Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Bonifz said there’s a clear process for one House member-elect to challenge seating another. He acknowledged the odds are long for such a challenge with Republicans about to become a majority in the chamber.

“Recognizing the House is shifting control, that may not be the outcome, but we think it’s imperative,” Bonifaz said.

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