The former president’s legal team requested a trial delay, saying Habba had been exposed to COVID and had a fever. She attended the party one day later.
Donald Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, was spotted rubbing elbows with Republicans in New Hampshire on Tuesday, just the day after asking for a delay in the ex-president’s defamation trial because she was feeling under the weather.
On Monday, one of the nine jurors considering writer E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation suit against Trump was excused for being ill.
Though Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyers agreed to continue the trial with eight jurors, Trump’s legal team requested a delay, saying Habba had been exposed to COVID and had a fever. She was not wearing a mask during the hearing.
The next day, however, Habba was sighted celebrating Trump’s win in the New Hampshire primary by NBC News’ Garrett Haake.
The Constitution provides no explanation for who makes that determination under the 14th amendment and under what standards they are to do so. And that is going to be the core of any legal fight over his candidacy - who determines eligibility under 14A and under what standard. Trump and his lawyers will almost certainly aim for the answer being either Congress or a criminal trial, while most on this sub hope that any state judge of SoS should be able to disqualify him nationally on their opinion alone.
The authors of the 14th probably didn’t think it was necessary, since they could just go “see that group over there engaged in open rebellion? we mean the people publicly in charge of that”, but that’s…fuzzier with the J6 stuff. It’s not like Trump publicly led the attack on the Capitol, he’s too much of a spineless wimp for that.
Furthermore, I am not sure that I really want random State judges determining what counts as insurrection. We already have Greg Abbott claiming that Texas is being actively invaded and the Federal Government is doing nothing about it. If Trump is thrown off the ballot because of the 14th Amendment, I have no doubt that some Texas judge will proclaim Biden as the leader of the Invasion of Texas and throw him off rhe ballot as well…
… which might be the outcome all of us Lemmings have wanted all along, but not quite like this.
I could pontificate on the other side, but I think this The Atlantic article does a much better job of explaining the 14th Amendment.