Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe declared that the Constitution “couldn’t be clearer” as he pointed out what makes Donald Trump “disqualified” from becoming president again.
Tribe, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday, cited Section Three of the 14th Amendment which states that a person is barred from holding office in the federal government if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“You are disqualified, period, so all of the charges against the president which at the moment don’t happen to include insurrection are really beside the point,” said Tribe, who likened the “disqualification” to those on presidential term limits, the age limit for the office and whether someone is a natural-born citizen.
Conservative law professors have recently referred to the section in arguments on whether Trump is eligible for the Oval Office as well as former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who stated at the first GOP debate that the former president is “disqualified.”
Tribe later said secretaries of state may have to set up a way to determine if Trump gave “aid or comfort” to the Constitution’s enemies before he pointed out the former president considering “full pardons” of Jan. 6 defendants.
“When he said he was going to pardon the ones who breached the Capitol and who had Confederate flags in there and caused mayhem and even death, that sure sounds like giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution,” he said.
Blitzer later asked Tribe, who recently co-wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic on Trump’s ineligibility for office, if the call on Trump is “subjective” in nature.
“Are you concerned this could potentially be abused down the road?” asked Blitzer.
“It’s certainly problematic but that’s why the framers of the 14th Amendment put in a safeguard. They said, if it’s abused, all you need is two-thirds of each house [of Congress] in order to remove a disability, a disqualification,” replied Tribe.