Posts tagged with "Crew"

Above, Judge Sarah Wallace presides over a hearing for a lawsuit to keep former President Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot. (Photo source: Jack Dempsey)

Colorado judge rules Trump can be on ballot—but says he ‘engaged’ in insurrection

November 21, 2023

On Friday, November 17, a judge ruled that former President Donald Trump had engaged in insurrection by inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—but decided that he is not barred from appearing on the primary ballot in Colorado, reports The Washington Post.

The ruling in Colorado’s state court— the first to find that the presidential candidate had participated in an insurrection—served as a rebuke to the Republican front-runner, even as it provided him with a legal victory. Trump has won a string of cases brought by opponents who are trying to keep him off the ballot under a provision of the Constitution (the 14th Amendment) that bars officials who engage in insurrection from holding office.

Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace wrote that Trump “acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means; specifically, by using unlawful force and violence.” And, she concluded, “that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection.”

An appeal is expected and could ultimately be resolved by the Colorado Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wallace’s ruling came a week and a half after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump could not be removed from the primary ballot in that state and three days after a Michigan judge reached the same conclusion.

Despite the decision’s blunt wording and findings, Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung championed the ruling, calling it “another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.”

Trump opponents have been bringing their lawsuits state by state in hopes of ultimately securing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that keeps Trump off the ballot in all states. The cases are moving quickly because caucuses and primaries will be held starting in January.

Adopted in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to those born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed civil rights to all Americans, including those who had been enslaved. The amendment’s lesser-known Section 3 was aimed at limiting the power of former Confederates by barring from office those who had sworn an oath to the Constitution and later engaged in insurrection.

Although Wallace found that Trump engaged in insurrection, she determined Section 3 does not apply to him. Section 3 refers to some offices by name as well as those who are an “officer of the United States,” but does not specifically mention the presidency.

Wallace determined those who wrote Section 3 “did not intend to include the President as ‘an officer of the United States.’”

The judge also determined that the amendment’s provision technically applied to those who swear an oath to “support” the Constitution. The oath Trump took when he was sworn in after he was elected in 2016 was to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.

Wallace wrote she did not want to disqualify someone from office “without a clear, unmistakable indication” that that was what those who wrote the 14th Amendment intended.

Even as she ruled in Trump’s favor, Wallace was unsparing in her description of his behavior before, during and after the attack on the Capitol. She found Trump has a “history of courting extremists and endorsing political violence” and knew his supporters were willing to engage in violence.

“The evidence shows that Trump not only knew about the potential for violence, but that he actively promoted it and, on January 6, 2021, incited it,” she wrote.

In Colorado and other states, Trump’s attorneys have argued the attack was not an insurrection, Trump did not participate in it and Trump told his supporters to act peacefully. In addition, they have contended Section 3 does not apply to the presidency and said Congress, not courts, should determine who is eligible to hold office.

The lawsuit was brought by six Republican and independent voters with the help of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington . Noah Bookbinder, the group’s president, said the voters would appeal the case to the Colorado Supreme Court soon.

“We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law,” he said in a statement. “Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way.”

Research contact: @washingtonpost

Above, Trump urges his MAGA supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. (Photo source: Philadelphia Inquirer)

Watchdog group sues to block Trump from Colorado ballot, citing 14th Amendment

September 8, 2023

A Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, September 6, to block former President Donald Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot in Colorado, citing the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office, reports CNN.

In recent weeks, a growing number of liberal and conservative legal scholars have embraced the longshot legal strategy. The lawsuit, from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is the first high-profile legal case attempting to use the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump has denied wrongdoing regarding the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and said in a recent social media post that there is “no legal basis” to use the 14th Amendment to remove him from the ballot.

A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution is disqualified from holding any future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or if they have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.

However, the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce this ban and it has only been applied twice since the late 1800s, when it was used extensively against former Confederates.

The lawsuit was filed by CREW on behalf of six Colorado voters, whom the group says are Independents or Republicans, including former U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider and former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson, both Republicans.

Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW, told CNN’s Abby Phillip on “NewsNight” on Wednesday that the group chose Colorado because of its “courageous plaintiffs,” early position in the primaries, and laws.

“For all of those reasons we thought it was a good first stop. It won’t be the last stop and we and others will bring other cases as well,” he said.

CREW was behind the most successful application of the so-called “disqualification clause.” A convicted January 6 rioter who was also an elected New Mexico county commissioner was removed from office last year on 14th Amendment grounds through a different but related legal mechanism that was initiated by CREW.

The nonprofit group on Wednesday sued Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in state court and asked a judge to issue an order “declaring Trump disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment” and barring Griswold “from taking any action that would allow him to access the ballot.”

“Because Trump swore an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution upon assuming the Office of the President on January 20, 2017—and then engaged in insurrection against the Constitution on and around January 6, 2021—he is disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment from ‘hold[ing] any office … under the United States,’ including the Office of the President,” the lawsuit says.

Griswold, a Democrat, said in a statement that she believes Colorado state law is “unclear” on how to review constitutional requirements for “whether a candidate is eligible for office” and that the newly filed lawsuit will provide critical legal guidance.

“I look forward to the Colorado Court’s substantive resolution of the issues and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office,” Griswold said.

The GOP primary in Colorado is on March 5, which is Super Tuesday. Trump’s federal criminal trial on charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is scheduled to begin March 4. He has pleaded not guilty.

Research contact: @CNN

Above, former President Donald Trump departs after speaking at a campaign rally. (Photo source: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Trump team prepares to fight efforts to block him from 2024 primary ballots over January 6 attack

April 19, 2023

Donald Trump’s campaign team is preparing for a state-by-state legal battle later this year over untested claims that a Civil War-era clause in the U.S. Constitution bars the former president from appearing on Republican primary ballots because of his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, reports The Washington Post.

Two nonprofit groups who do not disclose all their donors—Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Free Speech For People—have prepared multipronged legal strategies to challenge Trump across the country under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. They have written letters to state election officials, calling on them to block Trump from the ballot; while separately preparing voter lawsuits and state election board complaints.

Section 3—ratified in 1868 to punish Confederate officials after the war—disqualifies any “officer of the United States” from future public office who, after taking an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the country. Attorneys at both groups argue that Trump’s role before and during the January  6 riot is evidence he “engaged in insurrection”—a claim that was specifically endorsed by the House select committee that investigated the attack.

“It is a strategy designed to enforce the Constitution to bar Trump from serving as president,” CREW Chief Counsel Donald Sherman said of the legal efforts. “We have had two major insurrections in this country. One was the Civil War, which gave rise to Section 3. And one was January 6.”

But there is little recent legal precedent to guide courts on how to apply Section 3. Opponents of the effort are likely to argue that state elections officials have a ministerial role that does not allow them to bar candidates under the constitution. They will likely also argue that Trump did not engage in an “insurrection”—that Section 3 should not apply to a candidate before an election and that there needs to be an act of Congress to enforce Section 3. Legal scholars have also raised questions about whether a former president who has never served in another office counts as an “officer” under the clause.

“What these undemocratic organizations are doing is blatant election interference and tampering,” Trump campaign spokeperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “They are not even trying to hide it anymore and it is sad they want to deprive the American people of choosing Donald Trump—the overwhelming front-runner by far—as their president. History will not judge them kindly.”

Opponents also warn of the damage judges or election officials would do to the electoral process if they intervene to deny Republican voters the option of choosing Trump after much of the campaign season has passed. The Section 3 challenges cannot be filed until Trump applies for or is granted ballot access late this year, attorneys say, giving the courts just a matter of months to decide on the merits of the claim before votes are cast in the nomination fight.

“The practical implications of this is the greatest disruption of our electoral system that has been contemplated since the Civil War,” said James Bopp, a conservative attorney who represented two members of Congress last year whose ballot access was unsuccessfully challenged under Section 3. “On a practical level, this is so cynical and would be so destructive, it is actually in my view beyond comprehension.”

Finally, lawyers on both sides of the issue say if a judge ruled that Section 3 applies in any state, the case would likely be immediately appealed to federal court and potentially fast-tracked to the Supreme Court for review.

Research contact: @washingtonpost

Above, US. Representative David Cicilline. (Photo source: @davidcicilline/Twitter)

41 House Democrats introduce bill to bar ‘insurrectionist’ Trump from presidency

December 19, 2022

Representative David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island) and 40 other House Democrats introduced a bill on Thursday, December 15, that would ban Donald Trump from becoming president again because he “engaged in an insurrection,” reports HuffPost.

“Donald Trump very clearly engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, with the intention of overturning the lawful and fair results of the 2020 election,” Cicilline said in a statement. “You don’t get to lead a government you tried to destroy.”

Cicilline, senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and the impeachment manager for Trump’s first impeachment, noted that even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell held Trump responsible for last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.

There’s “no question—none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said after the storming of the Capitol, days before Trump left the White House.

The bill cites Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which bars any official who has sworn an oath to defend the government from then seeking reelection if they had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government — or have “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) survived a 14th Amendment reelection challenge in court earlier this year, but a challenge succeeded in September against a New Mexico official who participated in the January 6 insurrection.

A judge in New Mexico ruled in response to a lawsuit by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and others that Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin be removed from office—noting the attack on the U.S. Capitol was an insurrection and that Griffin’s participation disqualified him from office under the 14th Amendment.  The ruling removed Griffin “effective immediately” and barred him from holding public office again.

The New Mexico Supreme Court last month dismissed an appeal by Griffin, who was the founder of the group Cowboys for Trump and was convicted of trespassing on the Capitol grounds during the January 6, 2021, attack.

The decision marked the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified a public official under the amendment—and the first time any court has branded the January 6 storming of the Capitol an insurrection, CREW noted. The organization has said it plans to use the amendment to sue Trump to bar him from office.

“This language in our Constitution clearly intended to bar insurrectionists from holding high office in the United States,” Cicilline wrote to his colleagues last month after he drafted the bill

Proof that “Donald Trump engaged in insurrection” was “demonstrated through the January 6th Committee hearings, the 2021 impeachment trial, and other reporting,” he added.

If passed, the bill would “prevent Donald Trump from holding public office again under the Fourteenth Amendment,” Cicilline emphasized.

Trump “engage(d) in insurrection against the United States by mobilizing, inciting, and aiding those who attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt certification of the 2020 Presidential Election,” the bill states.

That makes him “ineligible to again hold the office of President of the United States or to hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,” according to the 14th Amendment, the bill states.

Research contact: @HuffPost

Above, former President Donald Trump (left) and his Attorney General Bill Barr. (Photo source: SBS News)

Secret Bill Barr memo instructing DOJ staff ‘not to charge Trump’ must be released, judge says

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May 6, 2021

A federal judge this week rejected the Justice Department’s attempts to keep under wraps a departmental opinion written while Bill Barr was attorney general that instructed staff not to charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction at the end of the Mueller investigation—calling the administration’s lawyers “disingenuous.”

According to a report by CNN, the department had argued in court that the largely redacted March 2019 memo was legal reasoning that helped then-Attorney General William Barr make a decision about Trump.

But federal District Judge for the District of Columbia, Amy Berman Jackson said she believed Barr and his advisers had already decided they wouldn’t charge the President with a crime before he got the written advice, and the memo was partly strategic planning instead of legal reasoning—and, therefore, could be made public.

The decision adds to the criticism federal judges and others have had about Barr and his handling of the end of the Mueller investigation. Jackson and others have repeatedly questioned Barr’s motives to keep documents related to the investigation —including Mueller’s findings and Barr’s reactions to them—secret or by delaying their release.

“The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time,” Jackson wrote in a 35-page opinion released on Tuesday, May 4.

“The fact that [Trump] would not be prosecuted was a given,” she added.

The judge’s opinion comes in a lawsuit where the government transparency group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is seeking access to DOJ documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

CNN reports that CREW and several other groups are still trying to pry new records from the Mueller investigation and make them available to the American public, through lawsuits and other challenges. The case Jackson decided this week deals with documents around Barr’s decision to decline to charge Trump.

The memo of supposed legal reasoning prepared for Barr should be released, Jackson ruled. A draft legal analysis from the Office of Legal Counsel would stay secret, Jackson also decided.

Research contact: @CNN

Illustration source: ProPublica.org

New York appeals court allows Trump emoluments case to move forward

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September 16, 2019

President Donald Trump has never been one “to look a gift horse in the mouth”—but now, his avarice may have consequences. On September 13, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that a lawsuit accusing the POTUS of violating the Emoluments Clause— Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution—could proceed after a lower court had thrown out the case.

Specifically, the clause “prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from any King, Prince, or foreign State, without congressional consent. Its purpose is to prevent external influence and corruption of American officers by foreign states

According to a report by The Hill, a panel of judges with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which alleged that the president violated the constitutional clause by refusing to put his business assets in a blind trust while in office and profiting off the presidency.

But the case had been dismissed by a lower court in December 2017.

CREW welcomed the reinstatement of the case: “If President Trump would like to avoid the case going further and curtail the serious harms caused by his unconstitutional conduct, now would be a good time to divest from his businesses and end his violations of the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution,” Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.

And CREW is just one of the many watchdog organizations that have raised concerns about the president’s decision not to put his company in a blind trust, according to The Hill.

Indeed, several of his actions in recent weeks seem to have been geared to generate profits for his properties—among them, his talk of hosting the next G7 meeting at his Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami; his “suggestion” that Vice President Pence stay at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland; and his deal with the USAF to do pricey refuels at the nearby airport and layovers at TrumpTurnberry.

Multiple lawsuits have alleged Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause , but none has gone to court until the September 13 decision cleared the way.

“I got sued on a thing called emoluments. Emoluments. You ever hear of the word? Nobody ever heard of it before,” Trump said at a speech in Pennsylvania last month. “And what it is is presidential harassment, because [the presidency] is costing me a fortune, and I love it.”

Chances are, he’ll be familiar with the Emoluments Clause soon.

Research contact: @thehill

Photo source: SoulCycle

Equinox to go up against Peleton and Mirror for streaming fitness supremacy

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August 16, 2019

Earlier this month, Stephen Ross, the billionaire owner of the popular fitness brands, Equinox, SoulCycle, Precision Run, and Blink Fitness, sparked outrage and calls for a boycott of his businesses when he hosted a fundraiser for President Donald Trump in the fashionable Hamptons area of Long Island, New York.

But that hasn’t slowed down his push into the fitness category. In fact, Ross now has announced his intentions to take on Peloton, the New York City-based exercise equipment and media company that has revolutionized the home biking experience—connecting users to live and on-demand streaming on-screen classes across a variety of devices for $39 per month.

According to a report by Fast Company, Ross’s new digital venture will include two separate pieces of hardware and personalized content representing Ross’s portfolio of brands.

Slated for launch this fall, the platform will pair with a new stationary bike identical to the one found in SoulCycle studios—with the addition of an attached screen. Equinox also will sell its proprietary Woodway treadmill, which can already be found at its Precision Run studios.

The new digital venture (which has not yet been named, Fast Company says) will include all the brands’ signature workouts—led by top instructors—in one network. It is not meant to replace the live studio experience, rather to serve as an addition for dedicated members who want an at-home offering.

The new digital venture puts Equinox in direct competition with Peloton, which also boasts both treadmill and stationary bikes along with a broad range of fitness content. Last year, Peloton opened a new production studio dedicated to yoga and meditation in New York City. The streaming giant is now valued at more than $4 billion.

Peloton stands out in the $14 billion home fitness equipment market, but it’s becoming an increasingly crowded space: Fast Company notes the long list of competitive startups—among them,  Mirror (personal training, yoga), Crew (rowing), and Tonal (weight lifting) ; all of which are attempting to do what Peloton did for the indoor bike.

While approximately 16% of the U.S. population holds a gym membership card, a recent survey found that 54% of Americans who work out at least once a month are interested in buying an at-home fitness system.

Over the last few years, Equinox members increasingly have demanded more ways to interact with the brand on their own schedule. Around 86% of them would like to spend more time with the brand than they get to, according to a recent survey of SoulCycle riders.

The new platform will integrate live and recorded original video and audio content–and will start with an invitation-only launch in the fall, with the at-home equipment available for purchase by the winter. A more public rollout is set for early 2020.

Research contact: @Equinox_Service