Maine’s secretary of state disqualified former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in the state.
Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits Trump from serving in office again due to his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump “over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Bellows wrote in a 34- page decision. He “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.”
Trump’s lawyer is likely to appeal the decision.
Bellows’ office said the decision will not be enforced until the courts rule on the issue “given the compressed timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and impending ballot preparation deadlines.”
“We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden,” he said. “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”
Maine becomes the second state to remove Trump from the ballot after Colorado did so last week.
