HOWARD TULLMAN OPINION IN CRAIN'S CHICAGO

 

Opinion: It's time for Illinois to turn the tables on Trump

By Howard Tullman

Credit: Bloomberg

August 24, 2023 10:01 AM AN HOUR AGO

 

Illinois has a rare opportunity to be one of the first states to adopt the position of many conservative legal scholars and foil the ex-president's ambitions, writes Chicago tech leader Howard Tullman.

One of the saddest of former President Donald Trump’s legacies is how he has so often made a mockery of the courts and the law. He understands better than anyone that the courts move painfully slow — even when they aren’t acting corruptly in his interests — and that delay is always in the criminal’s favor.

Trump — as indicated by the actual memos and written proposals of his co-conspirators — also understands that the current U.S. Supreme Court is more than willing to promote his schemes and plans by hiding behind bogus formulations about the need for the court not to interfere with political actions in order to let MAGA supporters do as they please in terms of election interference.

One of the greatest exposures we have as a country in the upcoming 2024 election cycle is that Trumpists will suppress votes, illegally bar voters, and otherwise interfere with and intimidate election officials and voters, and that the bureaucracy of the courts at every level and their hidebound protocols won’t be able to quickly address and respond in a timely manner to prevent these criminal acts before the elections in question are completed. Trump is an absolute master at using every right and process which we hold dear to further his corrupt plans and attacks on our democracy. We could be looking at Bush v. Gore all over again.

But Illinois has a rare opportunity to be one of the first states to turn the tables and use Trump’s typical tricks and his mastery of delay against him by adopting the position of many highly-regarded conservative legal scholars and other academics that Trump is automatically disqualified from running for president again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by virtue, at a minimum, of his giving aid and comfort to the mob of insurrectionists trying to prevent Congress from confirming President Biden’s election. Illinois should announce that it has determined that Trump's name cannot be included in the 2024 presidential ballots.

Taking such a position shortly before the ballots are printed presents a rare opportunity for Illinois to hoist Trump and the rest of the MAGA crowd on their own petards. There’s no need to await the outcome of the current trials, which allege a massively more substantial and long-term plan by Trump and his corrupt cronies to steal the election when he lost, because we all have seen and heard with our own eyes and ears direct evidence of Trump’s own actions and attempts to illegally interfere with the election. The trick is to shift the burden from the good guys to the crooks.

Instead of falling into the morass of suits, appeals, delays, and the likely and unfortunate outcome that no court action will confirm Trump’s disqualification in time to remove him from the ballots, the states should instead take the affirmative action of preventing his inclusion relying on the self-executing provisions of Section 3 which require no enforcement any more than the age or other stated limitations and put the burden of the Trumpists to petition and demand that the courts (up to and including the Supreme Court) interfere with and interrupt the deliberate actions of the states to determine and proscribe their own individual voting rules and requirements.

The obvious karmic charm of this approach is twofold: Trump will run out of time in seeking relief, and even this ludicrously slanted and corrupt Supreme Court has repeatedly and consistently stated that these kinds of political matters (along with abortion issues) must be left to the individual states. As the oracles say: What comes around, goes around.

Howard Tullman is former CEO of 1871 in Chicago, former executive director of the Kaplan Institute at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and past president of Kendall College and Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy.