Bureaucrats like Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows are "really out to get" former President Donald Trump because he was the first president in generations to stand up to them, one of his attorneys, Jesse Binnall, told Newsmax Sunday.
"You see that in a true Orwellian sense," Binnall, appearing with Trump impeachment attorney David Schoen on Newsmax's "Sunday Report," commented. "While claiming to be the heroes of democracy, their views of doing that is to try to disenfranchise the American people who support Donald Trump by making it so that they don't even have the option of voting for him on a ballot."
Bellows last week ruled that Trump could not appear on Maine's presidential primary ballot, with her decision coming after the Colorado Supreme Court voted to keep the former president off the ballot there.
Both cases hinge on Article 3 of the Civil War-era 14th Amendment, which says a person committing insurrection against the United States cannot hold office, Binnall called the cases "factually baseless."
"There is no legal basis, as has been very aptly explained by President Trump's legal team in this matter, to take him off the ballot, and, most importantly, there's no factual basis for it," Binnall said. "He's never been charged with insurrection, and on Jan. 6, he asked people to peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard.
"He asked people to respect law enforcement. He asked people to stay peaceful and when a few number of people got out of control, he asked everyone to go home. That is not the words of someone engaging in insurrection. That's somebody who supports the First Amendment."
Schoen, meanwhile, commented on calls from Maine's Republican Party to impeach Bellows, saying that he agrees that her decision was "absurd."
"She's not a lawyer, has no legal training whatsoever, [and] she has decided on a constitutional issue that legal scholars differ over," he said. "There is no constitutional basis for including it for a number of reasons. The text of the amendment itself doesn't include the [word] president. They considered president at the time and they rejected using the term president."
Further, the amendment can't infringe on the rights of voters and a candidate to run for president.
The Supreme Court, he added, will have to reverse the Colorado case.
"There is not a lot of time," he added, so Trump's legal team will have to file papers this week.
"It may be that the Supreme Court reverses the Colorado decision summary order because the ballots have to be printed," said Schoen. "There may not be time the flesh it all out, but they certainly can't affirm it in the summary order."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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