OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A state Republican lawmaker is vowing to impeach Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after she unilaterally decided that former President Donald Trump is guilty of “insurrection” and can be barred from the state’s 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment.
“The legislation calls for forming a special committee to conduct a “comprehensive review of allegations of misconduct” by Bellows over her “actions in and after the adjudicatory proceeding in disqualifying” Trump from the primary ballot,” The Center Square reported on Thursday.
“The bill’s sponsor, Rep. John Andrews, cites Bellow’s bias against Republicans and failing to ‘recuse herself for bias from that adjudicatory proceeding’ as required by Maine laws,” the outlet’s report continued.
Before being elected to her post, Bellows, a registered Democrat, served as executive director of the ACLU of Maine for eight years. In a Nov. 9, 2011, column for the organization, she opposed “voter suppression,” leading critics of her decision to boot Trump from the ballot to accuse her of massive hypocrisy on the issue.
According to Andrews’ legislation, “her role as a Maine presidential elector for Joseph R. Biden in the 2020 election is proof of this bias.”
Like the Colorado Supreme Court, Bellows made her decision based on a petition by voters in the state without giving Trump, through his legal team, his due process rights under the Constitution and the law.
“The Secretary is a completely biased Democrat partisan and a Biden supporter who is incapable of making a fair decision and allowing the people of Maine the right to vote for the candidate of their choosing,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement following Bellows’ decision. “Any attempt to remove President Trump’s name from the ballot is blatant election interference.”
Maine House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham dismissed Bellows’ claims that her decision was not based on partisanship, The Center Square noted.
“This is a sham decision that mimics third world dictatorships,” he said in a statement, the outlet noted. “It will not stand legal scrutiny. People have a right to choose their leaders devoid of mindless decisions by partisan hacks.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court removing Trump from the ballot in that state, upon which Bellows reportedly based her decision.
Colorado’s decision “is not and cannot be correct in our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people,'” the former president’s attorneys wrote in the court filing that CNN obtained.
CNN reported that the nation’s highest court “is facing mounting pressure to settle the question of whether Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, can be disqualified from holding public office, as state courts and election officials have come to differing conclusions across the country. The first contests of the 2024 primary begin in weeks.”
The outlet noted further: “The high court is separately involved in other matters that could impact the federal criminal case against the former president. Trump’s appeal comes nearly a week after the Colorado GOP, which is also a party in the case, filed a separate appeal, and two weeks after the Colorado ruling came down. The ruling has been put on hold while appeals play out and Colorado’s top election official has already made clear that Trump’s name will be included on the state’s primary ballot when it’s certified on January 5 – unless the US Supreme Court says otherwise.”
Fox News reported that Republicans are lining up behind Trump, calling the decision by the Colorado court wrong and unprecedented.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, presided over by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., stated in a filing with the Supreme Court that “even if the Colorado Supreme Court were correct that President Trump cannot take office on Inauguration Day, that court had no basis to hold that he cannot run for office.”
