Oct. 4, 2023 - Epoch Times
11:28
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into this wild story, I'll quickly mention that if you are just sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, as well as all the other platforms out there, and if you are looking for a source of honest, actual news, well, consider checking out The Epoch Times, because we've recently extended our awesome sale and subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which if you do the math, works itself out to just be a single dollar a month. | |
| And so if you're looking for an honest source of news, which is oftentimes completely blacked out by the mainstream legacy outlets, well, consider trying a subscription. | |
| I'll throw a link to the sale page. | |
| It'll be right there at the very top of the description box below. | |
| Now, diving into the main topic. | |
| Just yesterday, the US Supreme Court issued a major order related to President Trump's eligibility to run for office again. | |
| And this order of theirs, it was a major victory for both President Trump as well as for his campaign, given the fact that at this very moment, they're embroiled in at least four different serious lawsuits across the whole country. | |
| However, in order to explain what this ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court was, as well as what it means going forward in the 2024 race, let me back up for a quick moment and set the stage for you properly regarding how we got to this point. | |
| Now to start with, as I'm sure you're very well aware, the Republican primary is quite full, with all the different candidates jockeying for some airtime in order to hopefully supplant President Trump as the Republican nominee. | |
| And some of these candidates have gotten, you can say, creative with how they're trying to win the primary. | |
| For instance, you have Asa Hutchinson literally paying people to donate to his campaign. | |
| You have Vivek Ramaswamy posting exercise videos of himself over on social media. | |
| You have Governor Chris Christie going to all the major left-leaning news outlets to discuss the faults of President Trump. | |
| But then, aside from all these candidates, you also have some, you can say, even more creative approaches to get both name recognition while also, at the same time, trying to knock President Trump out of the running altogether. | |
| Case in point, you have this man right here, John Anthony Castro. | |
| Now, Mr. | |
| Castro is a tax consultant down in Texas, but then also, more relevant to our discussion, he's currently a candidate for the Republican primary, given the fact that he has filled out paperwork to run for president as a Republican. | |
| Now, you probably haven't heard of Mr. | |
| Castro and his campaign before watching this episode. | |
| Evidenced by the fact that he has never appeared in any nationwide polls, and also evidenced by the fact that according to records from the Federal Elections Commission, Mr. | |
| Castro has, thus far, raised exactly zero dollars for his campaign, aside from the $20 million that he himself invested into his own campaign. | |
| And so, if you were in Mr. | |
| Castro's situation, without much money and without much support, what would you do? | |
| Would you A, make an appeal through social media directly to voters, laying out your ideas and building a grassroots base? | |
| Would you B, subscribe to the Facts Matter YouTube channel in order to get honest news injected directly into your newsfeed? | |
| Or would you C, try to get President Trump disqualified from being able to serve in office, and in that process, make yourself a little bit famous? | |
| Well, the obvious answer is B. I mean, C. We're good to go. | |
| Here is exactly what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment actually says. | |
| Quote, no person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of president and vice president or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any state who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of any state legislature or as an executive having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of any state legislature or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United | |
| Now, as you likely guessed just by listening to it, this amendment was enacted shortly after the U.S. Civil War in order to keep former members of the Confederacy out of the American Congress. | |
| And when you scan the language of this section in the law, you'll notice how particular it is regarding the crimes which can get a person banned from serving in office. | |
| There are, in fact, two very specific crimes that are mentioned by name in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. | |
| You have insurrection and or rebellion. | |
| And those aren't just words. | |
| Insurrection and rebellion are actual legal crimes which are laid out in Section 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, subsection 2383. | |
| And so, people, politicians, and the media might use the word insurrection when referring to what took place on January 6th, but from a legal perspective, No one has been found guilty of something called insurrection. | |
| In fact, there was an article in the New York Times which laid it out quite succinctly. | |
| Quote, In addition to the handful of seditious conspiracy charges against members of two militias, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, prosecutors have charged various rioters with such crimes as assaulting police officers, obstructing an official congressional proceeding, and trespassing. | |
| And so, to use the 14th Amendment to try and disqualify President Trump from running for office because he engaged in insurrection is a little bit difficult to prove given the fact that neither him nor anyone else on that day has been charged with the actual crime of insurrection. | |
| But that is the move that Mr. | |
| Castro made in his lawsuit. | |
| And if you actually want to hear his full argument, I'll throw a link in the description box below to a video that Mr. | |
| Castro posted over on Twitter wherein he lays out his argument point by point. | |
| Regardless though, getting back to his lawsuit, in order to attempt to gain some standing in the eyes of the law, Mr. | |
| Castro made the claim that since he is also a Republican candidate, well, having President Trump's name appear on the ballot hurts his ability to obtain donations. | |
| Which might explain why it thus far has obtained exactly zero dollars. | |
| However, the federal judge in the case did not buy that argument. | |
| In fact, the judge, the Florida judge, he dismissed the lawsuit altogether, finding that Mr. | |
| Castro failed to show an actual legal injury, meaning that he did not have proper standing to file the lawsuit in the first place. | |
| And to this, Mr. | |
| Castro filed an appeal to both the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit as well as to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| And in his appeal, here was the question that he was asking to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| Quote,"...does a political candidate have constitutional standing to challenge the eligibility of another political candidate who competes for the same nomination by the same political party to be that political party's nominee for the same political office based on a political competitive injury in the form of diminution of votes?" Now, he filed this appeal. | |
| He filed this question to the U.S. Supreme Court several weeks ago. | |
| However, the justices were on summer recess until yesterday. | |
| And so, on Monday, October 2nd, on their very first day of the new session, they rejected his appeal. | |
| The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, tacitly acknowledging that the way that the federal judge ruled on it was correct. | |
| Meaning, in practical terms, That the case will be knocked back down to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, but will most likely not go anywhere. | |
| Now, for their part, when a representative for the Trump campaign was asked about Mr. | |
| Castro and his legal effort, he simply responded by saying, quote, However, on the flip side, this Supreme Court rejection hasn't appeared to stop Mr. | |
| Castro, evidenced by the fact that after the Supreme Court made their decision, he issued this statement, quote, The Supreme Court can deny to hear the case, but appellate courts cannot. | |
| I'm still pursuing decisions in the liberal appellate courts, and there is a full-blown trial scheduled for October 20th in New Hampshire and a bench trial in Arizona on October 31st. | |
| And indeed, just as he mentioned in that statement, there are other 14th Amendment-related cases being lobbied against President Trump, both by Mr. | |
| Castro as well as by other groups who are trying to take his name off the ballot. | |
| We'll just have to wait and see how they play themselves out. | |
| Although it is worth mentioning that besides the broad protections that President Trump has under the general First Amendment, as well as the difficulty of making the legal argument that what took place on January 6th was an actual insurrection rather than just a riot, well, there's another difficulty that these lawsuits will have to face as well. | |
| And that's the fact that this is not the first case in the last several years that attempted to use the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment to bar sitting lawmakers from seeking re-election. | |
| And up until today, all these different efforts have failed. | |
| And so you have a case over in Indiana against Congressman Jim Banks. | |
| You had another case over in North Carolina against former Congressman Madison Cawthorn. | |
| You had another case over in Georgia against Marjorie Taylor Greene. | |
| And all those attempts failed. | |
| In all those different cases, the judges determined that simply questioning election integrity and speaking publicly about election irregularities are all protected forms of speech that do not constitute being involved in a so-called insurrection. | |
| And so, we'll just have to wait and see whether any of these other lawsuits by Mr. | |
| Castro and these other groups that are being waged against President Trump will change that legal precedent. | |
| Now, for his part, though, I'll mention that Mr. | |
| Castro is not giving up. | |
| In fact, just earlier today, here was what he wrote over on Twitter. | |
| Quote, I now have standing since I'm on the ballot. | |
| Although I will mention that I checked a few hours ago, and being on the ballot doesn't appear to have changed Mr. | |
| Castro's financial situation, given the fact that he still, up until right now, has zero dollars donated to his campaign. | |
| But that is not stopping Mr. | |
| Castro from continuing the good fight, evidenced by the fact that he now has these different 14th Amendment lawsuits filed across 15 different states, saying that, quote, We're going to get the Liberal Ninth Circuit to kick Trump off the ballot in Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. | |
| Coupled with the First Circuit kicking him off the main ballot, there's zero path to 270. | |
| And so, there you have it. | |
| If you'd like to read more about this particular case, or if you'd like to read more about the 14th Amendment and what the dictionaries of that time period actually said when they defined the words rebellion and insurrection, I'll throw several great links to several good resources. | |
| They'll be down in the description box below this video for you to check out at your own leisure. | |
| And then lastly, if you are indeed sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, with or without the federal government's meddling, well, you're in luck. | |
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| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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