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Norms Impact

Donald Trump tells court he had no duty to ‘support’ the US Constitution

A former president is asking a court to treat the presidency as exempt from a constitutional disqualification clause by parsing oath language into an accountability loophole.

Judiciary

Oct 12, 2023

Sources

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-us-consitution-legal-b2428941.html

Summary

Donald Trump asked a Colorado court to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to bar him from the state ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing Section Three does not apply to presidents. The defense attempts to narrow constitutional accountability through a textual distinction between oaths to “support” the Constitution and the presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend” it. If accepted, it would carve out a presidential exemption from an insurrection-disqualification safeguard and reshape how constitutional constraints apply to the highest office.

Reality Check

This conduct presses a precedent that the presidency can be insulated from constitutional enforcement by wordplay, weakening the rule-of-law constraint that our rights depend on. Based on the record provided, the act described is litigation advocacy and is not, on its face, likely criminal under federal law; it is instead a bid to narrow constitutional accountability through an asserted textual exclusion. The democratic harm is institutional: normalizing the idea that constitutional disqualification mechanisms can be nullified for the highest office, even as the same context includes prior calls to “terminate” constitutional rules after the 2020 election.

Detail

Donald Trump, through counsel, filed a motion in a Colorado case seeking dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) that aims to disqualify him from the Colorado ballot under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Section Three, adopted in 1868, bars individuals who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding civil, military, or elected office unless two-thirds of both the House and Senate approve.

Trump’s filing argues that Section Three applies only to “officers of the United States” who take an oath “to support the Constitution,” and that the presidential oath uses different language: to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. The filing asserts that because the framers used “support” rather than the presidential oath’s wording, Section Three “never intended” to apply to the President and therefore does not apply to Trump.

The context notes prior statements by Trump calling for “termination” of constitutional rules following the 2020 election and reported remarks questioning the two-term limit in the Twenty-Second Amendment.