Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday slammed Maine’s top elections official for single-handedly deciding to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot.
“The idea that one bureaucrat in an executive position can simply unilaterally disqualify someone from office, that turns on its head every notion of constitutional due process that this country has always abided by for over 200 years,” DeSantis said during an interview with Fox News.
“It opens up Pandora’s box,” the Republican governor continued.
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“Can you have a Republican secretary of state disqualify [President Joe] Biden from the ballot because he’s let in 8 million people illegally – a massive invasion, including from enemies of our country?” he added, noting that Biden has allowed entry to illegal immigrants from countries like China and Iran.
DeSantis was reacting to news that Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, banned Trump from the ballot because he was an “insurrectionist.”
She did so under the 14th Amendment, which targeted former Confederates from serving in the federal government after the Civil War. She also was referring to Trump’s alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S Capitol.
Despite countless accusations from leftists, including their GOP sympathizers such as former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, about his leading a revolt on Jan. 6, Trump has never been charged with, much less convicted of, the federal crime of fomenting an insurrection.
Despite that, Bellows, like the four-Democrat majority on the Colorado Supreme Court, struck him from the ballot for that.
“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision.
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“Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions,” she added. “A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months.”
DeSantis suggested that voters should get used to the Democrats’ ongoing and repeated lawfare against Trump, which also includes four indictments filed by state and federal Democratic prosecutors in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.
“I do think that this is going to be a constant throughout the election year, where there’s going to be different parts of these legal cases that are going to be front and center,” DeSantis said.
“I think that we win when we hold Biden accountable and talk about the issues that matter to the American people.”
“The Democrats want the election to be about all these other issues,” he added. “They do not want to face accountability for their failed policies.”
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