What does “insurrection” even mean?
That’s the question top Republican lawmakers — including Mitch McConnell, who previously held Donald Trump responsible for the riot on January 6, 2021 — are asking the Supreme Court in a brief defending him from being disqualified in the 2024 election.
In a legal brief filed Thursday, 179 Republican politicians urged the court to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that kicked Trump off the 2024 ballot because it found he violated the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, which bans those who “engaged in” insurrection from running.
Now let’s point out that to the extent the term is not defined, it’s definition is Congress’s responsibility (that is to say their responsibility). To the extent that their definition is unclear, it is the responsibility of the Court to interpret it. So are they complaining that they haven’t done their own job?
18 U.S.C. section 2383 has Congress’s current definition of insurrection.
In short, this is just grandstanding to distract their gullible base.