As the Colorado Supreme Court wrote, January 6 meets the bar for insurrection āunder any viable definitionā of the term. The legal scholar Mark Graber, who has closely studied the Fourteenth Amendmentās history, argues that āinsurrectionā should be understood broadlyāan act of organized resistance to government authority motivated by a āpublic purpose.ā That certainly describes the Capitol riot, in which a violent mob attacked law enforcement and threatened members of Congress and the vice president in order to block the rightful counting of the electoral vote and illegally secure the victory of the losing candidate. The historical record also suggests that the amendmentās requirement that a prospective officeholder must have āengaged in insurrectionā should also be understood broadlyāmeaning that Trumpās speech on the Ellipse that morning and his encouragement of the rioters while they smashed their way through the Capitol more than fit the bill.
I just want to add, sincerely, thank you for (mostly āyour first sentence was entirely unnecessary) engaging with this in a serious and respectful manner. The other replies I received are the sort I might have expected on Reddit, but Iāve usually come to expect better on here (tankies defending Putin excluded). Just low effort, bad faith nonsense that either through deliberate malice or sheer stupidity, refuse to engage with the actual arguments I was making.
Yours was much better than that, so thank you.