By Gregory Korte, Stephanie Lai and Greg Stohr | Bloomberg
Former President Donald Trump’s latest legal woes are threatening to throw the Republican primary contest into chaos just weeks before the party’s voters begin the nominating process with the Iowa caucuses.
Challenges from voters, seeking to keep Trump from running again over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, are likely to end up before the US Supreme Court, with pressure already mounting for the justices to act quickly to quell the legal chaos.
On Thursday, Maine’s top election official moved to remove Trump from the ballot, citing his conduct after the 2020 vote, culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Hours later in California, election officials said Trump would stay on their ballot.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said the ruling in Maine — the second state to bar Trump, following Colorado — set the stage for an “epic constitutional showdown.”
“This puts more pressure on the Supreme Court to act and make a decision,” Waldman said. “There’s a real need for national clarity on this.”
Trump has faced lawsuits from voters across the country who say he is barred from seeking another term by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says a person who “engaged in insurrection” after taking an oath to support the Constitution is ineligible for office.
The questions about Trump’s eligibility for the White House have failed to dent his commanding lead over the rest of the Republican field. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Trump with an over 51 percentage point lead over his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, nationally and well ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
The Trump campaign has lambasted efforts to bar him as politically motivated and he has insisted he acted within his official duties as president in the run-up to the assault on the…
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