Weissmann: ‘People Died’ in the Civil War So Leaders Like Trump Could Be Banned from Ballot

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Americans died in the Civil War, so leaders “who engaged in insurrection” like the Colorado Supreme Court found former President Donald Trump did, can not run for office.

Weissmann said, “This is not new. It is true that this provision of the Constitution is new to lots of people because we’ve never been in a situation where you would have somebody running for office who engaged in insurrection or a rebellion. What’s remarkable to me is that the story isn’t really, the unanimous finding in the Colorado case because you had no one dissenting on the issue of did he do it.”

He continued, “No one was saying, oh, no, this was insufficient proof. There were lots of procedural issues, and I don’t mean to minimize them, that the dissent raised, but there was a district court finding and there was a majority opinion with no dissents on the fact that the leading contender for the Republican nomination had done what we had a civil war about. And the reason for this amendment was because after the Civil War, people said, if you have engaged in this kind of conduct you cannot be any longer the president, the vice president, or any federal position. So this is historically really important in terms of what many people died for in this country.”

Weissmann added, “I mean this is the largest loss of life in America at the time was over the Civil War and why we have this amendment. So people should take it seriously. It’s important for the Supreme Court to hear it and make a decision and people should be behind that.”

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