"I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!"Donald Trump, November 7, 2020
Ashland attorney Conde Cox makes a modest proposal. What if Americans humor the deteriorating old man as he continues his monomania?
For five years Trump has claimed that he won the 2020 election, often insisting that he won in a landslide. If only he were believed by the people who count and recount votes, and the election auditors, and the Republican secretaries of state, his Republican cybersecurity director, his Republican attorney general, and the multiple judges and appellate judges.
What if we granted Trump his wish?
Cox Cox is no stranger to finding quirks and loopholes in documents. He is a commercial and business disputes lawyer and an expert on businesses in trouble. He is the immediate past president of the Federal Bar Association — Oregon Chapter. He has been rated for many years as a Thomson-Reuters "Super Lawyer" in the field of business bankruptcy.
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Guest Post by Conde Cox
For five years, Donald Trump has continuously cried out and complained that he won the 2020 election fair and square. He recently sent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to Georgia in order to seize all 2020 ballot boxes to preserve the evidence he claims will show the fraud that cost him the 2020 election. In a speech given a few weeks ago in Davos, The Donald told the entire world that the 2020 election was “rigged” in favor of Joe Biden and that The Donald was the real winner!
Let’s just all tell him that we agree. You won in 2020, Donald. Happy now?
Here is the catch:
If The Donald is now agreed to have won in 2020, then he is also now constitutionally required to leave the White House immediately!
The 22d Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly states:“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”THEREFORE, Trump was disqualified from being elected in 2024 because -- as he has claimed and we now agree -- prior to 2024 he was twice elected, in 2016 and in 2020.
This literally legally correct, yet outrageous conclusion, should actually apply in real life in the case of Donald Trump, because this is the same guy, after all, who incited a violent riot on January 6, 2021, when Congress was counting the states’ electoral votes. It was Trump's stated purpose to trigger the 12th Amendment, which kicks presidential voting to a one-vote-per-state process in the House of Representatives if disputes over the validity of electoral votes prevent one person from collecting a majority of the votes. That way, with one vote per state, the Republican nominee would win because there is a majority of Republican-led states, many of them with small populations. Hence, we got the violence of January 6.
Here is the text of the 12th Amendment:
. . . if no person have such majority [of electoral votes], then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.
He wanted to override the voters' choice in 2020 using a quirk in the language of the Constitution. OK, Donald, two can play that game.
My modest proposal is not so outrageous if you agree that Trump should be estopped from denying that he won in 2020. He cannot assert repeatedly that he won in 2020 and file legal pleadings in over 60 cases asserting the same, and then be allowed to withdraw that position. He is stuck with it. It does not matter that Donald was not sworn in on January 20. 2021, and it does not matter that he did not serve a second term starting on that date. The Constitution does not say that failure to serve as president means that that term does not count. The 22nd Amendment speaks to elections. You get only two. He got his two: 2016 and 2020.
Therefore, by the same kind of constitutional loophole that The Donald tried to use to stay in office after 2020, a quirk in constitutional language can be used to evict The Donald from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now.
I hereby nominate Chief Justice John Roberts to serve the eviction writ.
Tomorrow: Back to the serious job of looking at how the Democratic Party can become a popular governing party. Spoiler: Change won't come from the DNC.
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Ummm...Pretty sure we'd have to indict someone for voter fraud to pull this one off. There''s a whole "rule of law" thingie that gets in the way I hope. Do we really want to establish this precedent? And so we now are admitting our elections are rigged?
ReplyDeleteYikes! Maybe a movie pitch? Call Ratner!
Clever idea, but it has a fatal flaw: Just because Trump was trying to apply a quirk in the wording of the 12th Amendment to his 2020 election doesn’t mean that he would abide by the 22nd Amendment. Rules don’t apply to him; he’s beyond the law. That’s why Senator Merkley refers to him as a Russian asset. It’s not that Putin is telling him what to do; he doesn’t need to. Russia helped get him elected because Putin knew that if they succeeded, it would be the cheapest, most damaging sabotage he could inflict on the U.S.
ReplyDelete