My favorite paragraph in the affidavit:

[BWdem4life]

(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term "office" does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

[dameatball]

1. Yes, I was noticing the "and shall" which is better than "or shall"

[Irish_Dem]

2. If he can be disqualified from office and under a gag order that would be progress.

[LAS14]

3. Oh!!!!! THIS IS BIG!!!!!!!!! nt

[underpants]

4. Nice find

[Blue Owl]

5. Bingo! Get lost, Diarrhea Donny

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Traitor. He should never ever be near any elected office again. Nor, should he receive any

government dole, any government assistance, anything since (1) he's a traitor (2) he's a billionaire, let him pay for it.

[ffr]

13. THIS

[JohnnyRingo]

27. Agreed

But then I'm just talking about what would happen to a County Comptroller under similar circumstances.

[soldierant]

41. I'm willing for the government to provide him with

3 hots and a cot. Oh, and an orange or dark green or grey outfit, whichever the Feds use.

[moondust]

7. Three years for each document?

[KS Toronado]

12. I believe that is correct

[Pinback]

25. Lucky for him he's gonna live for a couple of hundred years

according to Dr. Ronny Jackson.
May he spend of his days in humiliation and obscurity. I don’t share the optimism that he’ll ever be incarcerated, but a) humiliated, b) impoverished, and — long shot — c) ineligible to hold Federal office would be an acceptable condolence trifecta. I’ll take a & b if that’s all I can get, though.

[EndlessWire]

33. But when you add in the other code

violation mentioned in the warrant, you get THIRTEEN potential years per document. And, when the final complaint comes down, there could be some other statute thrown in there, not limited to just those two.

We haven't seen yet if Trump's two main crimes, sedition and stealing docs can be hooked up together in one complaint. We don't know if there is a connection or evidence like that.

So, if they counted each document as a separate violation, what would the complaint look like? Pretty unwieldy, "Count 301...," In contrast, Winner's complaint only had the one document, and one count. But they only charged her under the one statute, 793e.

So, might we only see counts under 793 and 2071? That doesn't seem like enough time for stealing all those docs.

Maybe he started the riot in order to cover up the thefts.

[summer_in_TX]

40. If, as seems highly probable, he sold the information about our undercover spies

Between leaving the White House and the memo from the CIA noting an unusual number of our spies had been killed, then I hope he gets an addition 25 to life for each one whose life was lost because of his perfidy.

[wnylib]

47. 900 years and still counting.

[Stuart G]

8. K & R This will all wind up in the courts. (one way or another)

[malaise]

9. Great spot

Rec

[Emile]

10. That settles it, he is now disqualified to run again. He was caught

red handed.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

24. Unless he drags out trial for 6 + years

[Warpy]

11. Even if all he gets is a fine, which he'll refuse to pay

getting him disqualified from holding office again is a very big deal. For that rreason, they need to pursue this quickly.

[KS Toronado]

14. I hope he refuses to pay.

And reaps the consequences of Mar-A-Lardo being seized.

[Traildogbob]

18. I hope one day

We as a Nation can follow directives like Florida has done in never allowing Climate Change be mentioned or Gay, and make it illegal to ever Mention or print the words Trump or Mar-A-Logo ever again. Add em to the forbidden words George Carlin spoke of. Sick in my gut of that fucking “M” word. Burn it down to eliminate the stench and diseases.

[sprinkleeninow]

20. Law/Principle of Sowing and Reaping

Here or Hereafter.

Sweating it now bigly.

I have no hatred. Just neutral 'relief'. One specimen of humanity has caused undue damage, stress, danger, valuable time squandered in and to our nation.

Prideful boasters and workers of iniquity shall reap their just and corresponding 'rewards'.

[Effete Snob]

22. A statute disqualifying people from running for president

Would contradict the Constitution's stated requirements to run.

[Warpy]

23. Constitution has a pretty low bar for qualifications

but erecting legal disqualifiers doesn't contradict it as much as modify it.

After Benedict Arnold, it did need some modification, and things haven't improved since then.

[Effete Snob]

28. Sigh

Okay, so if there is a Republican majority in Congress and a Republican in the White House, do you believe they can pass a law saying "no person who has ever been a member of the Democratic Party may run for president".

Why not?

These types of issues have been litigated in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969) and in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_v._McCormack

Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), is a United States Supreme Court case that held that the Qualifications of Members Clause of Article I of the US Constitution is an exclusive list of qualifications of members of the House of Representatives, which may exclude a duly-elected member for only those reasons enumerated in that clause.

Those cases dealt with statutory or other limitations on qualifications of members of Congress beyond the qualifications set forth in the Constitution. There is no reason to believe a different standard would be applied to Article II in contrast to Article I.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/395/486/

Our examination of the relevant historical materials leads us to the conclusion that petitioners are correct, and that the Constitution leaves the House [Footnote 44] without authority to exclude any person, duly elected by his constituents, who meets all the requirements for membership expressly prescribed in the Constitution.

...

Before the New York convention, for example, Hamilton emphasized:

"[T]he true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. This great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed."

...

A fundamental principle of our representative democracy is, in Hamilton's words, "that the people should choose whom they please to govern them." 2 Elliot's Debates 257. As Madison pointed out at the Convention, this principle is undermined as much by limiting whom the people can select as by limiting the franchise itself. In apparent agreement with this basic philosophy, the Convention adopted his suggestion limiting the power to expel. To allow essentially that same power to be exercised under the guise of judging qualifications would be to ignore Madison's warning, borne out in the Wilkes case and some of Congress' own post-Civil War exclusion cases, against "vesting an improper & dangerous power in the Legislature."

-------


How about this one - don't vote for a convicted felon. Simple, no? Leaves the choice in the hands of the people. It's called Democracy.

Giving a bare majority of Congress the power to decide who can run for president is a bad idea.

Giving a jury of 12 random people in Oklabamassippi deciding to "convict" a candidate of some "crime" so that he or she can be disqualified from office is also a bad idea.

[Warpy]

30. Le Sigh

No dead letter literalist here. A lot of the things in the original document needed modification.

I do agree that the statute(s) disqualifying TFG would be a very hard sell in front of this USSC. Our major hope there would be to buy enough time that he'd followed his father into dementia and forgotten the whole idea.

[Effete Snob]

31. I think our "major hope there"

Would simply be that not enough people would vote for him.

That's how a Democracy is supposed to work.

If the point is "I no longer trust voters to do the right thing", then we should really overhaul the Constitution to move further away from Democracy to something else.

[reACTIONary]

38. Thanks! Very informative! nt

[Abigail_Adams]

26. The constitution doesn't require

any specific individual to run, just that an election be held. If one individual is disqualified because of his crimes, any number of others can and will run.

[Effete Snob]

29. Yes, this is what the Birthers wanted to do

They wanted to pass laws requiring that presidential candidates submit all sorts of documentation to be put on state ballots for presidential elections, so that some state official could be a gatekeeper on who could run.

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/04/15/135438202/arizona-becomes-first-state-to-pass-birther-bill

The state's House of Representatives passed by a wide margin a birther bill Thursday requiring presidential candidates to provide proof they were born in the U.S., becoming the first state to do so. The bill now awaits Gov. Jan Brewer's signature.

It's unclear whether she will sign it, veto it or just let it sit on her desk, in which case it would become law after five days.

The legislation, HB2177, would require presidential candidates to submit proof of U.S. birth. Arizona secretary of state would determine if the submitted documents proved a candidate's citizenship.


There was a similar and equally dumb effort in Congress.

There is a redundant tendency at DU to come up with all kinds of gatekeepers around "who can run for president", without a lot of thought about the fact that, once you do that, then the gatekeepers are in charge of the presidency.

We've had proposals for psychiatric evaluations, for example, which would vest in some psych professional or committee, the power to decide for all of us who is eligible to run.

No, I do not want a jury of 12 random people in Oklabamassippi deciding to "convict" a candidate of some "crime" so that he or she can be disqualified from office.

[CaptainTruth]

50. It doesn't say "running" it says "holding office."

As I understand it he could still run, he just couldn't hold office. Consider that in every POTUS election 2000+ people run (file the form & pay the fee) & a whole bunch of them aren't qualified to hold office. There's no law that prevents them from running & I would argue that the activities involved in running & campaigning (giving speeches, printing & distributing literature/ads/signs etc) are protected by the 1st Amendment.

IMHO if he can grift his cult out of more money by running he'll probably do it if he can, even if he can't hold office. He'll do it for the grift.

Now, one thing I've often wondered is what would happen if a person who was disqualified from holding office ran & won the election. Consider Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, it, like the statute cited in the OP, defines the conditions for disqualification but I'm not aware that the Constitution or any statute describes what should happen if someone wins an election for an office they cannot hold.

[The Third Doctor]

15. Great

Then again he should never been in that office to begin with.

[MyOwnPeace]

16. BOOM!!!!!! (the sound of the auctioneer's hammer.....)

SOLD!!!!!!

Now LOCK HIM UP!!!!!!

[Evolve Dammit]

17. First indict. Trial will last years I'm afraid. Until he's convicted, he can run again. Right?

[getagrip_already]

19. glen kirscner doesn''t believe it would apply to potus....

Because the constitution specifically specifies the requirements for office.

The law that bars someone wouldn't apply where the constitution supersedes it.

[Effete Snob]

21. That's correct and for good reason

Can you imagine a Republican majority in Congress and the White House passing a statute making it illegal for Democrats to run for president.

This untested clause has been brought up before.

[wnylib]

48. But a President who is impeached and convicted,

can be barred from ever being president again.

[getagrip_already]

49. true, but that is also in the constitution......

It's not a law passed by congress.

What we probably need is a presidential accountability amendment to the constitution. It should state that a president can be prosecuted while in office, that a permanent special prosecutor be available to the doj which can't be fired by the potus or his appointees, and that a former potus can be banned from running or holding office if they are convicted of espionage, or other charges that make sense.

It would take a lot more thought than I've given it, but it should be sharp enough to cut a potus in half if they do what tfg did.

[wnylib]

51. The constitution gives Congress the

responsibility and right of creating laws of punishment for treason. On that constitutional right, Congress created a law for treason that includes being barred from holding office again. In other words, the law does not conflict with the constitution. It is based in the constitutionally granted power to Congress to pass penalty laws for treason.

The question then is whether Trump's behavior fits the constitutional definition of treason. The constitution defines treason as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to US enemies. Trump's actions with the classified documents might fit the description of aid and comfort to US enemies - if he gave (or sold) US security information to Russia or other nations.

[Lucinda]

32. ❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[bluestarone]

34. I love this paragraph! Best part (never run for office again)

I actually could see him, STILL choosing someone, so his FN CULT could continue to mess things up! Also is it possible that If someone he chooses actually gets elected, then could he be pardoned? Hope not! Anybody know if TFG could be pardoned in the future?

[GreenWave]

35. Now we are in the realm of dictators who appoint puppets to do their bidding.

[Martin68]

37. Umm, did you actually understand the implications of the affidavit?

Dictators are not subject to the rule of law. That's what this is all about. If we were in your realm of dictators and puppets, this would not be possible.

[GreenWave]

43. Sure enough did. Did you read the post above mine?

Granted the above poster was concerned about Trumpf getting pardoned by someone he has approved of. But if he has such a person in power it will not stop there.

So what happens when someone who is behaving like a dictator selects or approves to run for the appearances of a democracy? The appointed ones are mere puppets, hence my reference to the realm of dictators and their puppets.

[Martin68]

44. Right. So we are not "in the realm of dictators who appoint puppets to do their bidding."

We might enter such a realm if Trump continues to have the power to get his cult members elected. I just reacted to the inherent pessimism you suggested. Perhaps I take things related to Trump too seriously.

[calimary]

42. He'd run anyway.

Remember, none of this stuff, and certainly no laws or regulations or restrictions apply to him. He thinks so, anyway.

[Martin68]

36. The affidavit, and the NYT annotations are so encouraging. For the first time I think justice

may be served on Trump.

[BWdem4life]

39. I think it's obvious that a large percent of the population (including many Republicans)

have had enough of This Fuckin' Guy.

[RicROC]

45. damn, another loophole Trump will find.

"and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term "office" does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States."

Trump will argue that he is a retired officer of the Armed Forces, having served as the 'commander in chief'

[Upthevibe]

46. BWdem4life...........

Thanks for posting...........