(NewsNation) — Maine’s secretary of state Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, ruling he is disqualified under a 14th Amendment provision against leading insurrections.
The Maine decision follows a similar one in Colorado, whose state Supreme Court ruled last week Trump is disqualified from appearing on the ballot over his actions during the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. The state’s Republican Party has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, suspended her decision from taking effect until the state’s high court rules on an appeal, which is likely to come.
The challenges to Trump’s nomination were brought by three Maine voters who alleged he violated his oath of office when he urged a mob of people to descend on the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
Bellow agreed, writing in her decision that “The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.
“I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
Trump’s campaign said the Maine decision is “election interference.”
“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot.”
Trump’s lawyers plan to appeal the decision.
Other efforts to remove Trump from the ballot on 14th Amendment grounds have failed.
In Michigan, the state Supreme Court said it is keeping Trump on the primary ballot, declining to hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling. In Minnesota, the state Supreme Court in November dismissed a lawsuit seeking to end his candidacy, but it dodged the central question of whether Trump’s role in the Capitol riots disqualify him from the presidency.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
