Following the Colorado ruling that prohibits Donald Trump's participation in this State's primaries, California and Maine are looking for ways to prevent the former president from participating in their electoral processes at all costs. The Secretary of State of Maine, Shenna Bellows, announced that she will study a complaint to block his contest, but will make a decision after also hearing from the magnate's lawyers. The position of the Golden State authorities, however, is absolutely hostile to Trump. Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis made public a letter addressed to the Secretary of State in which she urges them "to explore every legal option to remove former President Trump from CA’s 2024 presidential primary ballot." However, the former president's lawyer, Alina Habba, assured that her client "is stronger than ever."
Today I sent a letter urging @DrWeber4CA to explore every legal option to remove former President Trump from CA’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.https://t.co/NA1CnCfFYC
— Eleni Kounalakis (@EleniForCA) December 20, 2023
"It puts the sanctity of our Constitution at stake"
In the letter, Kounalakis stressed that "the Colorado Supreme Court held that Trump's role in inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection disqualifies him from running for president under section three of the Fourteenth Amendment," so "California must stand on the right side of history" and remove the former president from the electoral race based on the Colorado ruling.
The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist. There will be the inevitable political punditry about a decision to remove Trump from the ballot,
but this is not a matter of political gamesmanship. This is a dire matter that puts at stake the sanctity of our constitution and our democracy.
Maine will listen to both sides before deciding
Last week, the former president's attorneys and the lawyers claiming the application of the 14th Amendment against him argued in the Maine House of Representatives making their case. Bellows assured that "At the hearing there will be an opportunity for both the challengers and the candidate to present oral testimony from witnesses, as well as additional documentary evidence, and to present oral arguments pertaining to the challenge in light of that evidence."
While Trump's defenders allege that the former president only "asked protesters to make themselves heard peacefully and patriotically," his detractors point out that the magnate incited violence and promoted breaking of the law:
Despite knowing the risk of violence and that the crowd was angry and armed, Trump incited violence -in a pre-insurrection speech- both explicitly and implicitly. He repeatedly called out -then-Vice President Mike- Pence, told the crowd to ‘fight like hell’ and used other variations of ‘fight’ 20 times, repeatedly insisted that ‘we’ -meaning the agitated crowd- could not let the certification of Joe Biden’s victory happen, and promised that he would march with them to the Capitol.
Trump "stronger than ever," according to his lawyer
Nevertheless, Trump is "stronger than ever," his lawyer Habba told Breitbart. "It's another day. I mean, I'd love to tell you that he´s shocked by it. But he´s not. This is the way they’ve been treating him since 2015. It just shows you how much he loves the country. He’s willing to sacrifice every piece of his life, including his family, his businesses, for the sake of the country. So he’s strong," he added.
Furthermore, the lawyer was convinced that The Supreme Court will reverse the Colorado ruling and stressed that all the attacks are due to the fear that Trump will be the next president, but that the only thing they achieve is, precisely, to bring him even closer to the White House: "What they don’t realize is the more they do, these desperate attempts, to take Trump down, it emboldens the base and emboldens and flips the independent voters to vote for Trump,” she said, adding, “I mean, this one really sparked outrage, as you saw."
