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.
Theyāre wrong, but I donāt think theyāre arguing in bad faith. What theyāre wrong about is that article 3 of the 14th is self-executing and doesnāt require a trial or conviction. This is because it was intended to bar former Confederate officers from holding federal office and trying and convicting all of them would have been a logistical impossibility.