Trump cites Michigan secretary of state’s ‘negative views’ in lawsuit to stay on 2024 ballot

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump denounced the Michigan secretary of state’s “negative views” of him in a lawsuit filed Monday.

“The Secretary’s lack of response is creating uncertainty, which affects how President Trump will allocate resources,” the lawsuit filing against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says, addressing her lack of response to communication about whether Trump’s name will appear on the state’s 2024 ballot.

The lawsuit, which names Trump as a plaintiff and the Democratic secretary of state as a defendant, takes aim at her efforts to keep the 2024 Republican presidential nominee off the ballot in Michigan.

(Video: MSNBC)

“This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that Secretary Benson is an active member of the opposing major political party and has publicly voiced her negative views of President Trump,” states the lawsuit, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims.

Citing the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, opponents of the former president have filed lawsuits in states including New Hampshire, Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan in an effort to prevent his name from appearing on primary ballots and generals

Seconds in The Detroit News:

The amendment, which dates back to the aftermath of the Civil War, says that no one can hold office if they have previously taken an oath to support the Constitution but “have been involved in an insurrection or rebellion.” Some legal experts, including retired Judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, have said the 14th Amendment should prevent Trump from running for president again after efforts to nullify lar his loss to Biden in 2020 included his supporters storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

But Trump’s lawyers argue that Benson “has no authority to refuse to put President Trump’s name on the ballot and to enter an injunction preventing him from doing so.”

They also rejected claims that the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol was an “insurrection”.

They “did not mean to wage war against the United States,” the lawyers wrote, adding that Trump did not “engage” in an insurgency and that his words in a speech to the crowd that day are considered “protected speech on a matter”. of public interest”.

“‘Entering’ requires some level of active participation,” the lawyers argued. “Inaction is not enough.”

“None of them meet the strict requirements of ‘incitement’, both because the content itself is not sufficiently explicit and because it does not demonstrate a specific intent to engage in illegal activity,” they wrote.

Benson received a letter from Trump attorney David Warrington in August seeking confirmation that the GOP nominee’s name would appear on the state’s ballot. For his part, Benson had already indicated that the former president’s name would only be blocked if a court requested it.

“Whether Trump is eligible to run for president again is a decision not for secretaries of state but for the courts,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last month.

And a letter from the Michigan Office of Elections noted that the state’s election law “did not expressly authorize” its top election official to make decisions about the 14th Amendment or other eligibility factors, according to the Detroit News .

“As the polls and press coverage indicate, President Trump clearly qualifies as a candidate who is eligible to be placed on the Secretary of State’s notification list and on the primary ballot,” Warrington wrote.

Benson’s failure to respond to the letter created the “uncertainty” that Trump’s lawyers refer to in the lawsuit.

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida, where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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