Hutchinson says Trump may not qualify to be president, citing 14th Amendment

Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson said Sunday that former President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 likely violated the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that he is therefore disqualified from taking the nation’s top office ever again. 

Hutchinson, one of the few Republicans who has been outwardly critical of Trump, announced he qualified for this week’s GOP presidential primary debate and said he would sign the required pledge to back the party’s eventual nominee.

In making his case, however, Hutchinson invoked an argument from some legal scholars claiming that Trump might not be qualified to be president. 

“I’m not even sure he’s qualified to be the next president of the United States. And so you can’t be asking us to support somebody that’s not perhaps even qualified under our Constitution. And I’m referring to the 14th Amendment. A number of legal scholars said that he is disqualified because of his actions on January 6,” Hutchinson said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

On how the legal argument would play out in practice, Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, said he thinks “there should be a court declaration. And so there would have to be a separate lawsuit that would be filed, in which there would be a finding that the former president engaged in insurrection, and that would disqualify him.”

“That’s one avenue,” he said. “The other way would be that if a specific state made that determination on their own, then that would put the burden on someone else challenging that. Either way, it winds up in court for a specific finding.”

“But I expect those lawsuits to be filed,” he continued. “I expect some states to take that action, but I think it’s a serious jeopardy for Donald Trump under our Constitution, not being qualified.”