Some key points in a brief filed in DJT's insurrection case

Some points from the 70 page brief that CREW filed with the USSC, arguing that DJT is an insurrectionist and not eligible to run for president:

These are the issues

according to CREW

Trump identifies no plausible basis to evade disqualification under Section 3. His brief gives only perfunctory treatment to the central issue—whether he engaged in insurrection. He does not show why the detailed 150-paragraphs of trial court factual findings were somehow clear error, and he fails to even acknowledge (much less to rebut) the most damning evidence against him. Section 3 does not give a free pass to insurrectionist Presidents; they are “officers” because they hold an “office.” And states’ broad authority to regulate presidential elections allows them to exclude constitutionally ineligible candidates from the ballot.

The thrust of Trump’s position is less legal than it is political. He not-so-subtly threatens “bedlam” if he is not on the ballot. Petr. Br. 2. But we already saw the “bedlam” Trump unleashed when he was on the ballot and lost. Section 3 is designed precisely to avoid giving oath-breaking insurrectionists like Trump the power to unleash such mayhem again.

As the Colorado Supreme Court correctly held, any plausible definition of that phrase “would encompass a concerted and public use of force . . . by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.” .... (“insurrection” means “rising of any body of the people, within the United States, to attain or effect by force or violence any object of great public nature” or “to resist, or to prevent by force or violence, the execution of any statute of the United States.”); United States v. Hanway, 26 F. Cas. 105, 127-128 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1851) (similar); .... 

B. Trump engaged in the insurrection

1. The Court should decline Trump’s invitation to re-weigh the facts concerning his involvement in the insurrection. This Court does not overturn plausible factual findings even if it is “convinced that [it] would have decided the case differently,” particularly where, as here, “an intermediate court reviews, and affirms, a trial court’s factual findings.” Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863, 881-882 (2015) (quotations omitted); see also Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 366 (1991) (plurality opinion) (“[I]n the absence of exceptional circumstances, we would defer to state-court factual findings, even when those findings relate to a constitutional issue.”). (emphasis added)

Trump continued inciting the mob. At 2:24 pm—an hour after he learned the Capitol was under violent attack—Trump tweeted:   

Given the trial court’s emphasis on Trump’s 2:24 pm tweet, Trump’s failure to mention it anywhere in his brief confirms how divorced his narrative is from reality. Trump finally told the mob to leave at 4:17 pm, in a message that praised the attackers and justified their actions.

Hours later, Trump celebrated the violence again:

3. Trump contests almost none of this evidence.

4. Finally, Trump advances a perfunctory legal argument that he cannot have “engaged in” insurrection unless he personally committed violent acts. See Petr. Br. 35-36. That is wrong.

The USSC might let DJT run for office again, claiming he was not an “officer” or by some other “reasoning.” I can see two opposing political considerations the six radical authoritarian Republicans are faced with in this lawsuit. 

On the one hand, the authoritarians like corrupt dictatorship, while loathing democracy, civil liberties and transparency. A decision in DJT’s favor has got to be quite enticing. But on the other hand, holding for DJT gives him a lot of power. That poses a serious threat to the court's own ongoing massive power grab in a profoundly corrupt political plutocracy-Christian theocracy framework.

It will be a very interesting decision. To me, either outcome seems to be about equally likely.