The January 6 Attack was an Insurrection - Ilya Somin - Volokh Conspiracy

Insurrectionists - January 6, 2020

Fourteenth Amendment  Equal Protection and Other Rights

• Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

  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 or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The first intifada on our soil since cannon fire opened in Charleston harbor was by those who marched on the Capitol, incited by Donald Trump's promise that it "will be wild" and that "I will be there with you". Was it an insurrection YES.  Should, in prudence. the Courts apply this language to Trump Not sure on that score. 

- GWC 1/7/2024

The January 6 Attack was an Insurrection

By Ilya Somin (George Washington Law and Cato Institute

Today is the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, intended to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. One of the points at issue in the Supreme Court case considering whether Trump should be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is whether the events of that day qualify as an "insurrection." It should be an easy call. The January 6 attack was an insurrection under any plausible definition of that term.

As legal scholar Mark Graber shows, contemporary definitions of "insurrection" prevalent at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted were quite broad: possibly broad enough to encompass any violent resistance to the enforcement of a federal statute, when that resistance was motivated by a "public purpose." That surely includes the January 6 attack!

I'm not convinced courts should actually adopt such a broad definition. It could set a dangerous precedent. As Graber notes, on that theory people who violently resisted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act qualify as insurrectionists, too. But January 6 was an insurrection even under a narrow definition that covers only violent attempts to illegally seize control of the powers of government. After all, the attackers were using force to try to keep the loser of the 2020 election in power, blocking its transfer to the rightful winner. If that isn't a violent attempt to seize government power, it's hard to know what is.