Virginia Fed Judge Weighs in on Trump Ballot Question (and Democrats Aren't Going to Like It)

By Nick Arama | 11:24 AM on December 30, 2023

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The left has been touting the decisions by the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State to boot former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot using the 14th Amendment.

They act as though the decisions were some kind of settled law that can not be questioned.

It's far from it, though. The Maine decision wasn't even a court decision.

They seem to be missing two big points on the matter. Both those decisions have been stayed pending appeal/court review so Trump remains on the ballot.

The other part they're leaving out of the story is how questionable those decisions are and how the cases pursuing the same claims in other states have failed.

George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley laid out a lot of the problems with the Maine Secretary of State's decision. Even CNN legal analyst Elie Honig explained that there were problems with due process and what she considered in coming to her conclusion.

But now a Virginia federal judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, appointed by Bill Clinton, has just dismissed a 14th Amendment lawsuit brought to disqualify Trump, finding the plaintiffs lacked standing.

“At least five additional federal courts have concluded that citizens attempting to disqualify individuals — including former President Trump — from participating in elections or from holding public office based on the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol lacked standing,” Brinkema wrote in her 13-page ruling.
“Plaintiffs have totally failed to demonstrate how their alleged injuries are traceable to the conduct of defendants,” the judge added. [....]
“Plaintiffs’ attempt to achieve a result similar to that in Colorado cannot occur in this Court because of the nature of their direct federal constitutional claims and because of the constraints imposed by Article III that limit the jurisdiction of federal courts,” she wrote.

The Trump team wasn't shy about pointing out how the federal courts have booted these cases.

“President Trump remains undefeated in 14th Amendment ballot challenges in federal courts with today’s ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“Thus far, federal courts in West Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Arizona, and Rhode Island, as well as state courts in Michigan and Minnesota have jettisoned these bad-faith, politically motivated attempts to steal the 2024 election by disqualifying President Trump from the ballot,” he added.

Cheung called it a "multi-front lawfare campaign to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters and interfere in the election.”

So far though, the lawfare hasn't worked, Trump has remained on the ballot, SCOTUS will likely jettison this tactic, and the effort has just exposed how far they will go to take out Trump. Trump has only continued to go up in the polls.

I would say it's backfired.