Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said that while he didn’t want to do it, he had to remind people of how “severe” the situation is.

A top Republican official in Missouri is threatening to remove President Joe Biden from appearing on the ballot as retaliation for the determination in two other states that Donald Trump doesn’t qualify because he “engaged in insurrection.”

“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote on the social media site X on Friday. “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”

Ashcroft’s post came shortly after the Supreme Court agreed to review a decision by Colorado’s high court that found Trump could be barred from the state’s primary ballot because of his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

  • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    And if we incorrectly apply false justice then it’s likely to come back and bite us in the ass.

    I agree 100%

    The case against Trump must be watertight. The Senate and courts in two states don’t believe this is the case.

    I’m arguing elsewhere in this thread that we need to be careful to dot our I’s and cross our T’s in serving justice, but we’re talking about the Bad Faith argument here, and not whether the case against Trump was watertight. It doesn’t matter if we have a watertight case against Trump, Republicans will try to use this against us. It doesn’t matter if we took this action or not, Republicans will try to do things like this against us anyway.

    But to your point (which is a real tangent), there’s no reason or precedent to apply a criminal burden of proof to a non-criminal statutory requirement, despite the fact some judges seem to want to. The Criminal burden of proof is extremely high because the consequences of criminal conviction are dramatic and possibly horrific, far worse than someone simply being left off a federal ballot. People have already been criminally convicted of collaborating with Trump to commit crimes. By even some civil burdens of proof, Trump has already been found liable for his role in the insurrection attempt.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      The Criminal burden of proof is extremely high because the consequences of criminal conviction are dramatic and possibly horrific, far worse than someone simply being left off a federal ballot

      If leaving someone of the ballot is made trivial then it will be used by bad people against good people.

      • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        It won’t be the good guys that make it trivial. The bad guys just get off by using real justice against us.

        If Trump makes it into the General Election, whether he wins or loses, we are a fallen state whose Constitution is meaningless. And I GUARANTEE the bad people are already using the hell out of that.

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          If Trump makes it into the General Election, whether he wins or loses, we are a fallen state

          Nah. Hyperbole.

          whose Constitution is meaningless.

          The 14th ammendment may need rework, but that doesn’t burn the entire document

          I GUARANTEE the bad people are already using the hell out of that.

          Genuinely interested in what these bad people are doing regarding the Constitution. Can you give examples?