Dem Lawyers Urge Congress To Ignore Electoral College, Stop Trump, Make Kamala President

In yet another attempt to impede Donald Trump from gaining the presidency, on Thursday, The Hill ran an opinion piece by two lawyers, one of whom had served as president of the New York City Bar, in which they urged Congress to reject the Electoral College vote in order to stop Donald Trump from being inaugurated as president.

Evan Davis, who once served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review and later served as counsel to New York Democrat governor Mario Cuomo, and David Schulte, who had served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, later became a friend and financial supporter of Barack Obama, and is now an investment banker, quoted the 14th Amendment, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

“Disqualification is based on insurrection against the Constitution and not the government,” the authors write. “The evidence of Donald Trump’s engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming. The matter has been decided in three separate forums, two of which were fully contested with the active participation of Trump’s counsel.”

The authors cite Trump’s second impeachment trial, in which Democrats sought to impeach Trump just before he left office. After the House passed the article of impeachment, citing “incitement of insurrection,” on January 13, 2021, by a 232–197 vote, with all 222 Democrats voting in favor, an argument ensued over whether the Senate, which was in pro forma sessions until January 19, could take on the matter. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi transmitted the article of impeachment to the Senate on January 25, five days after Trump had left office. Supporters of the impeachment argued that the Constitution permitted disqualification from holding future office. Trump was acquitted by the Senate on February 13; 57 senators voted in favor of conviction and 43 voted against.

The authors then cite “the Colorado five-day judicial due process hearing where the court ‘found by clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used in Section Three.’” After the verdict was affirmed by the Colorado Supreme Court, it was sent on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which did “not address the finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection,” the authors admitted.

The authors finally cite the House Select Committee that investigated January 6. They argue that evidence from witnesses leads to “the inescapable conclusion … that Trump engaged in insurrection against the Constitution.”

The authors cite the amended Electoral Act stating that one ground for objection to an electoral vote is if a vote of one or more electors was not “regularly given.” They then offer this supposition: “A vote for a candidate disqualified by the Constitution is plainly in accordance with the normal use of words ‘not regularly given.’ Disqualification for engaging in insurrection is no different from disqualification based on other constitutional requirements such as age, citizenship from birth and 14 years’ residency in the United States.”

They conclude their argument by stating:

To make an objection under the Count Act requires a petition signed by 20 percent of the members of each House. If the objection is sustained by majority vote in each house, the vote is not counted and the number of votes required to be elected is reduced by the number of disqualified votes. If all votes for Trump were not counted, Kamala Harris would be elected president.