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By Benjamin Lynch
US Politics and National Affairs Reporter
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Alina Habba, Donald Trump's lawyer, has said the Maine Secretary of State's decision to block the former president from the 2024 ballot was made because she is afraid.
Habba said Shenna Bellows had denied Americans their right of choice in an election. The attorney told Fox Business show The Bottom Line: "You're going to take him off the ballot because you're so afraid that the mess that you've made in the regime, in the Washington corruption, is going to get cleaned up in 2024 if he gets back." Newsweek contacted Bellows and a Trump spokesperson for comment on Saturday.
Following the footsteps of officials in Colorado, Bellows said Trump is ineligible to run because of Section Three in the 14th Amendment, which refers to the law on insurrectionists holding high office. It says no person can become an elector "or hold any office, civil or military" in state and federal positions who previously took an oath but engaged in insurrection. They cannot enter Congress.
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Legal experts are divided on the issue because Section Three does not refer to the presidency.
"I'm mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the 14th Amendment. But I'm also mindful that no presidential candidate has, ever before, engaged in insurrection," Bellows said in a video.
Trump is accused of alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In Georgia and Washington D.C., he faces charges relating to just this. He denies them all and says the charges are politically motivated.
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said Bellows is a "virulent leftist" who was interfering in the election.
Cheung added: "The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.
"We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter," Cheung said.
In Colorado, a 4-3 decision by the state's Democrat-appointed Supreme Court said Trump's "direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary."
The decision has been put on hold until January 4, pending an expected appeal by the Trump team. He is also expected to appeal the Maine decision.
The rulings are to be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in a landmark decision, could essentially decide if Trump is eligible to run for president.
Correction 2/8/24 11 a.m. ET: This article was amended to say the Colorado Supreme Court was Democrat-appointed, not all Democrat.
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