GOP front-runner fights claims he incited the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot and thus is ineligible for office
Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday asked a Maine court to reverse last week’s decision by the state’s top election official to remove the Republican front-runner from the presidential ballot.
Trump’s legal team filed a suit in Kennebec County Superior Court defending his eligibility for office and challenging the authority of Maine’s secretary of state to disqualify him from its primary contest.
Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, issued a written decision Thursday finding that Trump incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 following his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
His actions, she held, disqualified him from a second term under the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office those who swore to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.
Her decision came days after Colorado’s highest court ruled that Trump is ineligible for that state’s ballot because of his actions on Jan. 6. The ruling is likely to come under review by the Supreme Court ahead of this year’s vote.
Similar legal proceedings have been unfolding in other states, and Trump has won several initial decisions. Election officials in several other states, including Democrats in Massachusetts and Oregon, have said they wouldn’t kick Trump off the ballot without a court order.
“The Secretary made multiple errors of law and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner; and President Trump will be illegally excluded from the ballot as a result of the Secretary’s actions,” Trump’s lawsuit in Maine stated.
Trump’s lawyers argued that Bellows was a biased decision maker and that she had no authority to consider constitutional challenges to the former president’s eligibility to hold office again.
