Michigan judge says Trump stays on primary ballot, rejecting challenge under insurrection clause

By Corey Williams And Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press on November 14, 2023.

DETROIT (AP) – A Michigan judge ruled Tuesday that former President Donald Trump will remain on the state’s primary ballot, dealing a blow to the effort to stop Trump’s candidacy with a Civil War-era Constitutional clause.

Court of Claims Judge James Redford rejected arguments that Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol meant the court had to declare him ineligible for the presidency.

Redford wrote that, because Trump followed state law in qualifying for the primary ballot, he cannot remove the former president. Additionally, he said, it should be up to Congress to decide whether Trump is disqualified under a section of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that bars from office a person who “engaged in insurrection.”

“The judicial action of removing a candidate from the presidential ballot and prohibiting them from running essentially strips Congress of its ability to “˜by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such a disability,'” Redford wrote.

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