On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump appealed a decision by Maine’s leading election official to remove him from the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.
Filed in Kennebec County Superior Court, the complaint challenges the Dec. 28 decision issued by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, which arbitrarily declared that Trump “engaged in insurrection” up to and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, and is disqualified from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot. Bellows rationalized her election-rigging move by employing a twisted legal theory regarding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which deals with the “treatment of former state and federal officials, and their allies, who had taken sides with the Confederacy” during the Civil War.
In their Tuesday appeal, Trump’s lawyers argued that Bellows possessed no legal authority under Maine law “to consider the federal constitutional issues presented” and “made multiple errors of law and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner” by removing the former president from the ballot.
“By exceeding the limited scope provided for challenges by Maine’s Legislature, the Secretary has violated the Constitution’s Elector’s Clause, which requires states to appoint presidential electors ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,’” the complaint reads. “Because President Trump’s sworn statement, in the form provided by the Secretary, was factually true, it was an error of law, arbitrary and capricious, and an abuse of discretion for her to find it false. All of the evidence on which
