Poppycock

Not one person has been charged with insurrection in connection with Jan. 6th.

Not. Even. One.

Libs STILL insist on keeping Trump off the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Even if he were guilty of insurrection—he isn’t—that provision STILL wouldn’t apply to him.

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 29, 2023

Because there is no crime of “insurrection.” There is, however, the crime of sedition, and several people have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. Which is “insurrection” by any other name.

There's a reason for that.  Insurrection leads to toppling the government.  It is the crime of sedition, or the Constitutional crime of treason.  Sedition is one of the oldest crimes in the U.S. Code.  And that's the reason the drafters of the 14th used the more general term, "insurrection," rather than the specific criminal term, "sedition."

The latter implies proof of a crime, which under the due process clause of the 5th Amendment and the first clause of the 14th, means there must be a trial to establish the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt."  Civil court only requires a preponderance of the evidence, which is the standard used by the Colorado courts.

Application of clause 3 of the 14th Amendment is a civil, not criminal, matter.  No one has to be charged with a crime, or proven guilty of it, in order to put clause three into effect.  Similarly, to challenge ballot access for a Presidential nominee takes only a civil suit and proof in civil court that the defendant is not a natural born citizen, or hasn't lived in the U.S. for 14 years prior to filing, or is not 35 or older.

What Lee is bringing up isn't even a challenging legal argument.  It's, at best, a political one.  But ballot access and eligibility is determined by law, not by politics.

And Mike Luttig is hardly a “liberal.”  The rest of Lee's tweet is just as much poppycock as that.