Former President Donald Trump has been disqualified from the presidential primary ballot in Maine after a ruling by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, the state’s top election official.Â
The ruling stems from a lawsuit that claims that, according to a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump is disqualified from holding office because of his involvement in the events on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol.
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any person from holding public office if they previously took an oath on the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection.” The amendment was added following the Civil War and was initially meant to prevent former Confederate military and political leaders from holding office.
Bellows, who is a Democrat, wrote in her ruling that Trump “was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Bellows wrote in her ruling, as reported by Axios. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
After issuing her ruling, Bellows spoke with CBS News, explaining that her “obligation under Maine State law was to issue a decision very quickly, not permitted under Maine law to wait for the United States Supreme Court to intervene in this particular proceeding.”
“I was required to issue that decision. And I could only look at the hearing, evidence, and facts that were presented during that hearing. In evaluating the weight of evidence, it made clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder that was laid in a multi-month effort to delegitimize the 2020 election, and then chose to light a match,” she added during the interview.
Trump and his legal team responded to the decision from Bellows by claiming that she is a “virulent leftist” who has “decided to interfere in the presidential election.”
“Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, in a statement sent to CNN.
Just a day before the decision from the secretary of state, Trump and his legal team had requested that Bellows recuse herself from the case due to concerns about her bias against the former president, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“The Secretary is a completely biased Democrat partisan and a Biden supporter who is incapable of making a fair decision and allowing the people of Maine the right to vote for the candidate of their choosing. Any attempt to remove President Trump’s name from the ballot is blatant election interference,” wrote Trump on his website.
Bellows’ ruling also came on the same day that the former president was placed back on the Colorado primary ballot after an appeal was filed by the Colorado Republican Party, which The Dallas Express also covered.
