Legal Expert Says 14th Amendment Should Prevent Trump From Being President Again

Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter recently pointed out that the 14th Amendment actually prohibits anyone that has supported an insurrection from ever holding public office again. He believes that this clause absolutely applies to Donald Trump, which would mean that Trump would NOT be able to run for President again in 2024. Farron Cousins discusses the clause in the 14th Amendment and what it could, and could not, mean for Trump's future ambitions.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

According to former Bush white house ethics, lawyer, Richard painter, in a recent interview with CNN, Donald Trump may not actually be able to run for president, not just in 20, 24, but ever again. And in fact, it's not just president Donald Trump may be barred from ever holding another public office in the United States for as long as he lives. And painter explained it's all because of section three of the 14th amendment to the United States constitution, and section three specifically bars, any individual that has supported an insurrection against the United States from ever holding public office. Again, it's that simple. So Mr. Painter says Trump supported the January 6th insurrection, therefore should not ever be able to run again. Now, of course, there is a workaround, by the way, to this section three of the 14th amendment. And the workaround is that if you get two thirds of both bodies of Congress or the house and the Senate to vote to waive it, then it doesn't matter.

You get around it, but you're never going to get two thirds of both bodies to really support anything. So I don't think the workaround is really something Trump wants to do, but this is an interesting angle, right? The constitution. It would seem bars Trump from running for office again, because he supported the January 6th insurrection. If you can prove it. And if you can define what happened on January 6th as an insurrection. Now I know we've used that term. A lot, others in the media have used it. Politicians have used it. Other politicians have denied that it was an insurrection. So it really would come down to what the definition of an insurrection is. And then you would have to interpret the motives of those individuals. They wanted to overturn an election, not necessarily overthrow the government and make their own government. Now I know some people are probably shaking their heads at that saying, Nope, Nope.

They wanted to overthrow it and start their own with Trump. Sure, sure. That's an argument that could be made. Could, could you get it to hold up in court though? Cause that's the thing everybody always forgets, you know, and it's easy honestly, to sit here and say like, oh, all these people should be in jail, but it's never that simple. It's never that simple. We know it's pretty obvious what happened on January 6th was an insurrection. I believe it was an insurrection. I believe Donald Trump supported that. Could I prove in a court, could I prove to Congress that Trump supported it? Probably not. You know, where is my hard and fast evidence to say without a doubt that Donald Trump supported the events that happened that day there's evidence, right? There's a little bit of it. There's his speech at the rally. There's the other members of Congress speaking at that rally there's reports of Donald Trump watching it on TV and loving every second of it.

But I couldn't prove that. And neither could you, and that's the problem here. I'm glad Richard painter got people thinking about the 14th amendment section three of the 14th amendment. You know, everybody got a little bit of a con law lesson by looking it up, but I have to disagree with him. Yes. The 14th amendment would bar somebody who supported an insurrection from running for office again. But I think the definition of those things is so vague and vagueness would absolutely benefit the defending party, which would be Donald Trump. So I don't think in this particular instance, the 14th amendment would bar Trump from running for office for again, sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news. Just trying to keep everybody grounded in reality.