The state elections board in North Carolina, fighting a lawsuit that challenges Democrats’ claims that GOP members of Congress are “insurrectionists” for questioning the 2020 presidential race results, says it has the authority, essentially, to convict a congressman of “insurrection.”
The fight is over the agenda adopted by Democrats following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. They immediately started defining it as an insurrection, even though those arrested and charged generally are facing charges of trespassing and the like.
But their goal is to use a long-dormant constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that prevents members of Congress from having participated in an “insurrection,” like the Civil War.
Democrats and leftists say GOP members who even joined in the questioning of the 2020 results are guilty.
As part of that move, several citizens in North Carolina moved to disqualify Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., from this fall’s election for being an “insurrectionist” and he sued to stop the political maneuver.
Now the state elections board has claimed the power to make that determination about Cawthorn.
The board, fighting to kill the lawsuit, said, “The state does not judge the qualifications of the elected members of the U.S. House of Representatives. It polices candidate qualifications prior to the elections. In doing so, as indicated above, states have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The state has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley pointed out that that position by the state, “is wholly outside of the language and intent of this provision. Cawthorn is right to challenge any such action as unconstitutional.”
He explained if that state board claim were to be adopted, it would “invite partisan and abusive practices by such boards. It is also wrong on the purpose of this constitutional provision. Moreover, there is a vast difference between enforcing an objective standard on the age of a candidate and enforcing the subjective standard whether that candidate’s views make him an ‘insurrectionist.'”
He said the Democrats “are playing a dangerous game with the long-dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — the ‘disqualification clause.’ The provision was written after the 39th Congress convened in December 1865 and many members were shocked to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, waiting to take a seat with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.”
That was the Civil War.
“The mantra that this was an insurrection does not meet the standard. The Constitution fortunately demands more than proof by repetition. In this case, it requires an actual rebellion. The clause Democrats are citing was created in reference to a real Civil War in which over 750,000 people died in combat. The confederacy formed a government, an army, a currency, and carried out diplomatic missions,” he said.
He called the riot a “national tragedy,” but confirmed, “it has not been treated legally as an insurrection. Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition.”
“That’s because this was a riot that was allowed to get out of control by grossly negligent preparations by Capitol Police and congressional officials. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of a conspiracy for an insurrection. Only a handful were charged with seditious conspiracy, a broadly defined offense,” he explained.
He warned, “The board’s position is itself a threat to democracy and free speech.”
Cawthorn said, in suing over Democrats’ attempt to use Section Three of the 14th Amendment, the attempt violates the First Amendment, violates his Due Process rights, violates the House power to determine the qualifications of its members and violates federal law.
The circumstances were that President Trump, and many others, raised concerns about the election processes, and questioned the accuracy of the victory given to Joe Biden.
What is known is that a number of issues remain under investigation. A coming documentary reveals hundreds of “mules” were hired to dump piles of mail-in ballots in drop boxes during election night’s overnight hours.
Also, independent analyses have concluded either of two ways likely “bought” the election for Biden. One was the $420 million Mark Zuckerberg gave to mostly leftist election officials with instructions to recruit voters from Democrat districts, and the other was the collusion by legacy and social media companies that decided to suppress accurate, and damaging, reports about the Biden family international business scandals just before the election.
The case explains the state procedure for challenging a candidate is faulty.
James Bopp Jr., lead counsel for Cawthorn, said, “The Challenge Statute violates fundamental principles of rights to free speech, due process, and federal law. Requiring someone to prove he didn’t do something based upon the barest of ‘suspicions’ is patently unfair and unconstitutional. But more fundamentally, the people should decide who represents them, no state bureaucrats in Raleigh.”
Cawthorn’s federal lawsuit names the state Board of Elections, which received some complaints based on nothing more than “suspicion” that he took part in an “insurrection.”
It then requires Cawthorn to prove he didn’t.
“Ominously, this is not an isolated effort,” said Bopp. “Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer behind the Trump Russia hoax, announced a few months ago a nation-wide effort to disqualify about two dozen Republican Members of Congress under this bizarre legal theory. Rep. Cawthorn is just the tip of Elias’ spear. Of course, this would mean that some two dozen Democrats might be running without a Republican nominee, cementing Democrats’ control of Congress. This despicable effort needs to be stopped here and now and Rep. Cawthorn has pledged to do everything necessary to do so.”
IMPORTANT NOTE: While Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi’s “House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack” daily accuse law-abiding, patriotic, conservative Americans of being “domestic terrorists,” “violent extremists” and “insurrectionists,” a REAL INSURRECTION – indeed, a full-scale MARXIST “RESET” of the greatest nation on earth – is well underway in the United States of America, led by them. Remember the rule: Whatever today’s Democrats are falsely accusing their critics of doing and planning, that is precisely what they themselves are ACTUALLY doing and planning. The reality of all this is stunningly documented and explored in the January 2022 issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE REAL INSURRECTION: Branding normal Americans as ‘terrorists,’ Democrats pursue total revolution.”
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
