Photo by Paul Steinhauser/Fox News
The New Hampshire Secretary of State announced this week that he won’t invoke the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to block Trump from the 2024 primary ballot, amid increasing talk that Trump could be removed from the ballot over the incident at the Capitol on January 6th 2021.
At the news conference at the state house in Concord on Wednesday, New Hampshire Secretary of State Dave Scanlan addressed legal efforts by some to prevent Trump from getting his name on the 2024 ballot, citing the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which disqualifies those who’ve taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office again if they’ve “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“President Donald J. Trump is once again at the forefront of political attacks, this time by those who are attempting to disqualify the former President from appearing on New Hampshire’s primary ballot by weaponizing Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment against him,” the New Hampshire legislators wrote in a letter from the Trump campaign to Scanlan.
Scanlan said that as long as Trump “submits his declaration of candidacy and signs it under penalties of perjury, pays the $1,000 filing fee, his name will appear on the presidential primary ballot”, which is scheduled for February 2024.
Scanlan emphasized on Wednesday that “there is no mention in New Hampshire state statute that a candidate in a New Hampshire presidential primary can be disqualified using the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution referencing insurrection or rebellion.”
“There is nothing in the 14th Amendment that suggests that exercising the provisions of that amendment should take place during the delegate selection process as held by the different states,” he added. “There is nothing in our state statute that gives the Secretary of State discretion in entertaining qualification issues once a candidate swears under the penalties of perjury that they meet the qualifications to be president.”
Scanlan also sought legal input from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, Fox News has reported. Attorney General John Formella agreed and highlighted that state law “does not afford the Secretary of State discretion to withhold a candidate’s name from the ballot on the grounds that the candidate may be disqualified under Section Three when a candidate has not been convicted or otherwise.”
In August New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella’s office announced that it is “reviewing the legal issues involved” regarding using the 14th amendment to remove Trump from the ballot, at the request of Scanlan’s office.
Several States so far have announced that they don’t have the authority to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot. So far not a single state has prevented the former President from having his name on the ballot.
