Looking out to the coming days, there are five stories I have my eye on that are shaking our legal and political tree, with the promise of more fruit to fall.
I have the feeling it does, especially under the “aid and comfort” part. But it would be a lot more difficult to prove in most cases, unless it could be shown that they were complicit in actually being part of the conspiracy. For example, Tuberville spoke at the J6 rally, and those who approached Trump for pardons, as well as whoever led the “tours” for those found guilty.
There was a law suit pressed in federal court challenging both Madison Cawthorne and MTG as officeholders who indeed fell under §3 proscription for actively supporting the Jan6 "insurrection"... a federal judge ruled for the plaintiffs, but it was overturned by the 4th Circuit, on the grounds that the clause was "backward-looking" - i.e., pertaining ONLY to former Confederate govt. officials - rather than prospective, an interpretation that surely will eventually be heard by SCOTUS. Cawthorne lost his seat in a primary election, and the plaintiffs didn't take the 4th CA decision further re: Greene. Expect more of this as other citizens or Blue state election officials file suit against other elected Repubs, or tRump himself to keep him off the 2024 ballot.
I’m curious about whether Section three actually requires a guilty verdict before applying to Trump. Maybe if we do like employers do and “suspend” him from the campaign until his case(s) are decided. Not only would that take him off the ballot, but it would also force him and his lawyers to DESIRE a speedy trial. I wonder who we should petition to get that suspension.
Amongst those legal scholars supporting the 14th's Clause 3 as grounds for barring tRump from future office, the consensus is that the provision is "self-executing" and needs no antecedent determination - e.g., a conviction in a court of law - to be invoked. But, somewhere and sometime, there will be a high-court ruling setting the parameters of the actual use of §3, beyond the 4th CA earlier ruling on its use re: Cawthorne and MTG. I believe that the Baude-Paulsen paper speaks to indiscriminate or partisan use to bar a political opponent from running for office.
I read that it is an automatic disqualification. Such as age limits on driving licence, buying alcohol etc. No need for a court to find him guilty. But of course, that throws up issues. Again, from what I've read, it will make its way through the courts up to the SC
I do remember I had to be 21 and had just started teaching 150 HS students in unairconditioned buildings (as they all were then). But I do not even remember registering to vote. Plus I have since relocated to 3 other countries and and 4 other states and numerous other cities. You’d think those R legislatures in the red states would want to make it easy for their seniors to vote by mail. Fortunately for my way of thinking .....
If our drivers license numbers changed that often, you know that when we returned to our original voting state those numbers also had changed. My birthdate seems to be the same, but don’t we change the calendar every couple millennia or so? We could be due.
Update - I did keep the confirmation card Ireceived when I changed my registration when we moved a couple years ago. However, don't know if the registration number is the same as my "original" registration in this state.
Similar case here - I was just old enough to vote in the 1984 general election, but I have no idea if I was assigned a voter ID #. I've also lived in 2 states prior to the current one I'm living in and I can only say for certain that my current ID has always had a voter ID # listed on it.
No matter what the hell happens to Trump, the Republican party is undergoing chemo now. They'll be on life support in 442 days, 14 hours and 28 minutes from right .....now !
Thank you Jay, I will commit to The Big Picture next month, tapped out my August "extras" budget with WCK and Maui Humane Society donations. I hope you don't mind that I share this article, to help put people in jobs that will help the Infrastructure Plan succeed. Unions have "Hiring Halls" and some make "on the job" training placements that give people (that are successful in the program) "experience" needed to qualify for permanent positions. 💙
Reality, every Republican congress person who voted not to impeach Trump when he incited the insurrection was aiding and abetting him and should be removed from office.
With further thought, yes and no. Sure they can vote no but isn’t accepting state electoral votes more ceremonial than a true vote? I mean if they can reject a state’s vote, why would it have been illegal for Pence to reject the entire count and not illegal to challenge a state’s vote? Real question.
The problem is that your age is pretty determinable. As was your place of birth (absent "truther" allegations.") But what exactly IS 'insurrection and rebellion." In our system, I think a court has to decide that threshold point.
Judge Unseats Official Who Trespassed at Capitol on Jan. 6
The ruling made Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in New Mexico, the first official in more than 100 years to be removed under the Constitution’s bar on insurrectionists holding office
The language that helps me see this situation clearly is:
"By the Constitution, disqualifications SHOULD be made on known, documented public facts.
"But because the authoritarians have succeeded to the degree they have in destroying truth (evidence-based, observed events and circumstances), the decision about this one disqualification WILL go through the courts."
I wish it were not so. Better would be along these lines:
A planetary scientist who (for whatever reason!) publicly claims the Earth is flat, is applying for membership in a professional association. He would be automatically disqualified, based on massive documentation evidence and facts observed by all of humanity -- the way the months leading up to January 6th were, and that day itself, as documented in the Jan6 Committee Report's 845 pages and Jack Smith's 8/1/23 4-count indicitment's 45 pages and Fani Willis's 98-page indictment, plus thousands of publicly available videos and written reporting.
No court process SHOULD be necessary for this scientist to be disqualified, but if the Flat Earthers have caused enough destruction of trust in documented truth, and created fear of violence, then there WILL be a court process.
State Court as part of the false elector cases? Federal Court for state who decides on removal? Whatever it is, I think it will take too long to be effective before 2024. As I've said elsewhere, (below at this point) I'd rather it not go to court at all if there is any chance that the Extremes would hear it because they are likely to interpret the phrase way too strictly.
But is insurrection and rebellion actually defined?
Sure, we all saw it with our own eyes as it unfolded on Jan 6 as well as the tapes and tweets, the Jan 6th hearings, the data in the various indictments, etc, etc. But is that enough?
The actual mechanism for this clause to take effect isn’t at all clear to me.
Fingers crossed that smarter people figure it out. And fast.
The recent scholarly articles about Trump disqualification may be strategic moves to create citable legal authorities for the likely eventual Supreme Court decision on this matter. The disqualification clause has never been invoked against a presidential candidate, so there is no judicial precedent. In the absence of such precedent, scholarly journal article would at least give Justices inclined to rule against Trump something to cite.
You are assuming the current SC is open to "scholarly journal articles."
They do exactly what they want to do no matter how scholarly journals and the public later blast their decisions as wrongly decided. The majority are MAGAts and I doubt they would rule against their friend in any way.
Maybe that was during the mercifully short-lived Chris Licht regime, as the new management seems to be trying to return to elements of the "old" CNN, FWIW.
Most of the media is owned and controlled by old, white supremacist MAGAt billionaires. Trump sells and they are in the business of making money. The many actions of the Biden administration that help real people (not just Republicans) aren't news. Sensationalism sells. Trump sells. The media will cover him to the bitter end, whatever that may be.
Why would anyone do an interview with someone who wrote "I hate him passionately" about oneself and the whole world has had the opportunity to see what was expressed? Boggles my mind. This is absolutely the only thing Tucks ever expressed with which I totally agree.
They're both popular with the same people. Even if that was the only thing they agreed on, it would be enough to draw a crowd and make them both some money.
Three things: 1) The Constitution doesn't say who gets to decide whether someone is ineligible for office because of insurrection and also doesn't define what insurrection is. 2) In any event, Trump has not yet been convinced of insurrection and is presumed innocent until convicted. I don't see anything in the Constitution that says someone is ineligible just because they have been indicted. 3) I think we need to be very careful not to set up any sort of procedures and/or rules that the right wing could then use to claim protesters on the left (for instance climate change protesters or Black Lives Matter protesters) are ineligible for office.
I probably will. However, I don't think we should use the originalist argument, even to influence people in the middle, because I am opposed to the originalist argument from both an intellectual/logical and a political point of view. When the framers drafted and agreed upon the Constitution, they were setting up a general structure, responding to a particular problem which the Articles of Confederation couldn't solve. Then, they were forced to agree to the Bill of Rights--e.g. primarily a list of limits on governmental power over the individual--in order to get that structure into effect. The idea that we should be limited only to what they could conceptualize at that time and in that pre-industrial historical period is just absurd and we shouldn't give it any weight just because it supports our position in some particular way and on some particular issue.
Well, it's a law review article of apparently 126 pages and I haven't been able to find a downloadable or even readable copy yet. And I probably will "speed read" it eventually. But, my point wasn't that I was "discounting" it. And, as far as I can tell from reading about it in the NY Times and elsewhere, their conclusion is very similar to the conclusion of Lawrence Tribe, who is not an originalist. Generally, that disqualification for inciting insurrection is "self-executing", just like being too young or not being a natural born citizen and, therefore, the election officials who are responsible for putting names on the ballot should refuse to put his name on the ballot. That decision would then be appealed by means of law suit and eventually end up at the Supreme Court. I have two problems with that. First of all, I think that process would create incredible chaos before the election. Secondly, disqualifications like being too young or not being a native born citizen are objectively factual. But, even though it seems obvious to me that Trump incited insurrection, my opinion, although evidence based, is ultimately a matter of opinion. It is not "fact" until and unless he has been convicted of the crime. Plus, as they say "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"; e.g. I wouldn't want an election official in, for instance, Arkansas deciding that a Black Lives Matters protestor, for example, had incited insurrection and refusing to put that person's name on the ballot.
Re: MAGA threats against Willis, Judge Shutkan, and GJ members, using the "n-word"...tRump has been posting on SM about "rigging" the GA election against him, and is calling out - wait for it - the "riggers" who are doing him dirty. ""Riggers"...hmm, now what do you suppose he meant by that?
Before ESPN.com removed "comments" from their articles, any writeup of a Tiger Woods event would inevitably have some readers referring to Woods as - wink-wink, nudge-nudge - "Tigger"...nobody missed THAT allusion.
Thanks for zeroing in on the problem that no one seems to be focusing on: how to bar Trump. In 1866 it was easy to prove insurrection and/or rebellion etc. It pertained to members of the Confederacy (see Heather Cox Richardson’s explanatory article). The 1866 Congress did not conceive of Section 3 being necessary beyond Civil War crimes. So they didn’t provide a definitive blueprint for today. They failed us. We are now failing them.
I don’t know that they failed us. They gave us an out, and per the article in the UPenn Law Review, that out is fairly clear. We’ll see what judges do with it.
The stochastic terrorism, rooted in history, fanned of late from Charlottsville to Ruby and Shaye, through all the immediate past shenanigans of horror, should be the focus, the point, the proof, the condemnation, the entombment of the political and legal fates or all of these abhorrent players; they are anti-human, grossly unfit, monstrous purveyors of acrimony, misanthropes of the worst sort.
We need a way for our system to hold stochastic terrorists accountable, in the way RICO laws hold mob bosses accountable even in the absence of a plan so long as there is a criminal enterprise. Not sure how to do this and not run afoul of free speech. We’ll see what lawmakers try to do.
One interesting theory on the upcoming Trump-Carlson interview: Trump knows he's losing the GOP primary, and would rather divert his followers to an event where he can plead for them to send him money. If he loses access to GOP campaign funds, he'll definitely need other ways to pay his legal bills.
Why does he get to use campaign funds for his legal bills? I don’t understand it. I thought that was illegal, like using campaign funds to pay off a sex worker…..
The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency with 300 employees and the logical place for candidates and parties to be disqualified. The latter are required to be certified for its candidates to be placed on state or Federal ballots.
However, when it was created in 1975, its structure virtually guaranteed no "regulation". There are six commissioners, 3 Dems and 3 Reps. and is usually tied and unable to decide much of anything. In terms of the laws/regs it implements, they are 90% related to campaign financing.
Wonder if the 14th amendment Section 3 prohibition would also apply to members of Congress who supported J6 participants and activities...
I have the feeling it does, especially under the “aid and comfort” part. But it would be a lot more difficult to prove in most cases, unless it could be shown that they were complicit in actually being part of the conspiracy. For example, Tuberville spoke at the J6 rally, and those who approached Trump for pardons, as well as whoever led the “tours” for those found guilty.
There was a law suit pressed in federal court challenging both Madison Cawthorne and MTG as officeholders who indeed fell under §3 proscription for actively supporting the Jan6 "insurrection"... a federal judge ruled for the plaintiffs, but it was overturned by the 4th Circuit, on the grounds that the clause was "backward-looking" - i.e., pertaining ONLY to former Confederate govt. officials - rather than prospective, an interpretation that surely will eventually be heard by SCOTUS. Cawthorne lost his seat in a primary election, and the plaintiffs didn't take the 4th CA decision further re: Greene. Expect more of this as other citizens or Blue state election officials file suit against other elected Repubs, or tRump himself to keep him off the 2024 ballot.
Yes, there are many in the House.
I’m curious about whether Section three actually requires a guilty verdict before applying to Trump. Maybe if we do like employers do and “suspend” him from the campaign until his case(s) are decided. Not only would that take him off the ballot, but it would also force him and his lawyers to DESIRE a speedy trial. I wonder who we should petition to get that suspension.
Amongst those legal scholars supporting the 14th's Clause 3 as grounds for barring tRump from future office, the consensus is that the provision is "self-executing" and needs no antecedent determination - e.g., a conviction in a court of law - to be invoked. But, somewhere and sometime, there will be a high-court ruling setting the parameters of the actual use of §3, beyond the 4th CA earlier ruling on its use re: Cawthorne and MTG. I believe that the Baude-Paulsen paper speaks to indiscriminate or partisan use to bar a political opponent from running for office.
I read that it is an automatic disqualification. Such as age limits on driving licence, buying alcohol etc. No need for a court to find him guilty. But of course, that throws up issues. Again, from what I've read, it will make its way through the courts up to the SC
Who even was given a "voter ID number" when they first registered? I sure don't remember anything of the kind - of course, it was 50 years ago, too!
I do remember I had to be 21 and had just started teaching 150 HS students in unairconditioned buildings (as they all were then). But I do not even remember registering to vote. Plus I have since relocated to 3 other countries and and 4 other states and numerous other cities. You’d think those R legislatures in the red states would want to make it easy for their seniors to vote by mail. Fortunately for my way of thinking .....
Same for me: 8 states and 7 countries.
If our drivers license numbers changed that often, you know that when we returned to our original voting state those numbers also had changed. My birthdate seems to be the same, but don’t we change the calendar every couple millennia or so? We could be due.
Update - I did keep the confirmation card Ireceived when I changed my registration when we moved a couple years ago. However, don't know if the registration number is the same as my "original" registration in this state.
In North Carolina (I live here) the Board of Elections maintains a Voter Search web app to locate the information that would be on your voter id card.
Interesting. Where I live, I can search MyVote and confirm I am registered and my address, but does not show the voter ID number.
Similar case here - I was just old enough to vote in the 1984 general election, but I have no idea if I was assigned a voter ID #. I've also lived in 2 states prior to the current one I'm living in and I can only say for certain that my current ID has always had a voter ID # listed on it.
No matter what the hell happens to Trump, the Republican party is undergoing chemo now. They'll be on life support in 442 days, 14 hours and 28 minutes from right .....now !
https://www.270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock/
They should operate to remove the tumor first.
And voters then will pull the plug in a well-justified euthanasia.
Thank you Jay, I will commit to The Big Picture next month, tapped out my August "extras" budget with WCK and Maui Humane Society donations. I hope you don't mind that I share this article, to help put people in jobs that will help the Infrastructure Plan succeed. Unions have "Hiring Halls" and some make "on the job" training placements that give people (that are successful in the program) "experience" needed to qualify for permanent positions. 💙
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/bidens-infrastructure-building-boom-missing-one-thing-workers-rcna100209
Reality, every Republican congress person who voted not to impeach Trump when he incited the insurrection was aiding and abetting him and should be removed from office.
I understand the impulse, but the law permits them to vote no in each instance, so it can’t be a ground for disqualification under Section 3.
With further thought, yes and no. Sure they can vote no but isn’t accepting state electoral votes more ceremonial than a true vote? I mean if they can reject a state’s vote, why would it have been illegal for Pence to reject the entire count and not illegal to challenge a state’s vote? Real question.
Good point, but many have aided him in other ways.
Everyone who voted not to approve a state’s electoral vote was participating in the plot.
In article after article, from scholars and judges and lawyers left and right, I keep reading that no conviction is needed.
Disqualifications due to being under age 35 and residency do not need a court process. It is the same with insurrection and rebellion.
The problem is that your age is pretty determinable. As was your place of birth (absent "truther" allegations.") But what exactly IS 'insurrection and rebellion." In our system, I think a court has to decide that threshold point.
It almost certainly has to be a court of law. But which one, and where? It’s going to be a big question if it gets going.
First contemporary use was in a New Mexico state district court last September, and the barred party so far hasn't appealed, I believe.
Judge Unseats Official Who Trespassed at Capitol on Jan. 6
The ruling made Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in New Mexico, the first official in more than 100 years to be removed under the Constitution’s bar on insurrectionists holding office
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/us/politics/jan-6-griffin-insurrection.html
The language that helps me see this situation clearly is:
"By the Constitution, disqualifications SHOULD be made on known, documented public facts.
"But because the authoritarians have succeeded to the degree they have in destroying truth (evidence-based, observed events and circumstances), the decision about this one disqualification WILL go through the courts."
I wish it were not so. Better would be along these lines:
A planetary scientist who (for whatever reason!) publicly claims the Earth is flat, is applying for membership in a professional association. He would be automatically disqualified, based on massive documentation evidence and facts observed by all of humanity -- the way the months leading up to January 6th were, and that day itself, as documented in the Jan6 Committee Report's 845 pages and Jack Smith's 8/1/23 4-count indicitment's 45 pages and Fani Willis's 98-page indictment, plus thousands of publicly available videos and written reporting.
No court process SHOULD be necessary for this scientist to be disqualified, but if the Flat Earthers have caused enough destruction of trust in documented truth, and created fear of violence, then there WILL be a court process.
Sigh.
State Court as part of the false elector cases? Federal Court for state who decides on removal? Whatever it is, I think it will take too long to be effective before 2024. As I've said elsewhere, (below at this point) I'd rather it not go to court at all if there is any chance that the Extremes would hear it because they are likely to interpret the phrase way too strictly.
But is insurrection and rebellion actually defined?
Sure, we all saw it with our own eyes as it unfolded on Jan 6 as well as the tapes and tweets, the Jan 6th hearings, the data in the various indictments, etc, etc. But is that enough?
The actual mechanism for this clause to take effect isn’t at all clear to me.
Fingers crossed that smarter people figure it out. And fast.
The recent scholarly articles about Trump disqualification may be strategic moves to create citable legal authorities for the likely eventual Supreme Court decision on this matter. The disqualification clause has never been invoked against a presidential candidate, so there is no judicial precedent. In the absence of such precedent, scholarly journal article would at least give Justices inclined to rule against Trump something to cite.
You are assuming the current SC is open to "scholarly journal articles."
They do exactly what they want to do no matter how scholarly journals and the public later blast their decisions as wrongly decided. The majority are MAGAts and I doubt they would rule against their friend in any way.
Media should not air so much about trump. A change of attitude is necessary. Cut his mic and trump the soufflé will deflate pdq.
It seems to be going the opposite way, with CNN trying to gain supporters from the right.
CNN is dead to me.
Maybe that was during the mercifully short-lived Chris Licht regime, as the new management seems to be trying to return to elements of the "old" CNN, FWIW.
Most of the media is owned and controlled by old, white supremacist MAGAt billionaires. Trump sells and they are in the business of making money. The many actions of the Biden administration that help real people (not just Republicans) aren't news. Sensationalism sells. Trump sells. The media will cover him to the bitter end, whatever that may be.
Why would anyone do an interview with someone who wrote "I hate him passionately" about oneself and the whole world has had the opportunity to see what was expressed? Boggles my mind. This is absolutely the only thing Tucks ever expressed with which I totally agree.
The whole ecosystem is so toxic, contradictory and warped, I just don’t know how anything happens at all.
They're both popular with the same people. Even if that was the only thing they agreed on, it would be enough to draw a crowd and make them both some money.
Three things: 1) The Constitution doesn't say who gets to decide whether someone is ineligible for office because of insurrection and also doesn't define what insurrection is. 2) In any event, Trump has not yet been convinced of insurrection and is presumed innocent until convicted. I don't see anything in the Constitution that says someone is ineligible just because they have been indicted. 3) I think we need to be very careful not to set up any sort of procedures and/or rules that the right wing could then use to claim protesters on the left (for instance climate change protesters or Black Lives Matter protesters) are ineligible for office.
You should probably read the two articles regarding this to determine the reasoning behind the opinions of these jurists.
I probably will. However, I don't think we should use the originalist argument, even to influence people in the middle, because I am opposed to the originalist argument from both an intellectual/logical and a political point of view. When the framers drafted and agreed upon the Constitution, they were setting up a general structure, responding to a particular problem which the Articles of Confederation couldn't solve. Then, they were forced to agree to the Bill of Rights--e.g. primarily a list of limits on governmental power over the individual--in order to get that structure into effect. The idea that we should be limited only to what they could conceptualize at that time and in that pre-industrial historical period is just absurd and we shouldn't give it any weight just because it supports our position in some particular way and on some particular issue.
The Bible doesn’t literally say that, it’s a misinterpretation, a misreading of what it does say.
Isn’t the originalist approach the same as taking the Bible literally - such as the Earth is 4500 years old?
I don’t agree with originalists either, but shouldn’t you read their comments before discounting their positions?
Well, it's a law review article of apparently 126 pages and I haven't been able to find a downloadable or even readable copy yet. And I probably will "speed read" it eventually. But, my point wasn't that I was "discounting" it. And, as far as I can tell from reading about it in the NY Times and elsewhere, their conclusion is very similar to the conclusion of Lawrence Tribe, who is not an originalist. Generally, that disqualification for inciting insurrection is "self-executing", just like being too young or not being a natural born citizen and, therefore, the election officials who are responsible for putting names on the ballot should refuse to put his name on the ballot. That decision would then be appealed by means of law suit and eventually end up at the Supreme Court. I have two problems with that. First of all, I think that process would create incredible chaos before the election. Secondly, disqualifications like being too young or not being a native born citizen are objectively factual. But, even though it seems obvious to me that Trump incited insurrection, my opinion, although evidence based, is ultimately a matter of opinion. It is not "fact" until and unless he has been convicted of the crime. Plus, as they say "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"; e.g. I wouldn't want an election official in, for instance, Arkansas deciding that a Black Lives Matters protestor, for example, had incited insurrection and refusing to put that person's name on the ballot.
Re: MAGA threats against Willis, Judge Shutkan, and GJ members, using the "n-word"...tRump has been posting on SM about "rigging" the GA election against him, and is calling out - wait for it - the "riggers" who are doing him dirty. ""Riggers"...hmm, now what do you suppose he meant by that?
We all know.
Before ESPN.com removed "comments" from their articles, any writeup of a Tiger Woods event would inevitably have some readers referring to Woods as - wink-wink, nudge-nudge - "Tigger"...nobody missed THAT allusion.
Thanks for zeroing in on the problem that no one seems to be focusing on: how to bar Trump. In 1866 it was easy to prove insurrection and/or rebellion etc. It pertained to members of the Confederacy (see Heather Cox Richardson’s explanatory article). The 1866 Congress did not conceive of Section 3 being necessary beyond Civil War crimes. So they didn’t provide a definitive blueprint for today. They failed us. We are now failing them.
I don’t know that they failed us. They gave us an out, and per the article in the UPenn Law Review, that out is fairly clear. We’ll see what judges do with it.
Sorry Jay! I was being facetious. There is an out, but it’s a murky one right now.
I was a history teacher; no one takes our history more seriously than I.
The stochastic terrorism, rooted in history, fanned of late from Charlottsville to Ruby and Shaye, through all the immediate past shenanigans of horror, should be the focus, the point, the proof, the condemnation, the entombment of the political and legal fates or all of these abhorrent players; they are anti-human, grossly unfit, monstrous purveyors of acrimony, misanthropes of the worst sort.
We need a way for our system to hold stochastic terrorists accountable, in the way RICO laws hold mob bosses accountable even in the absence of a plan so long as there is a criminal enterprise. Not sure how to do this and not run afoul of free speech. We’ll see what lawmakers try to do.
Perhaps parsing language such as to preclude phrases invoking an illegality from protections-
One interesting theory on the upcoming Trump-Carlson interview: Trump knows he's losing the GOP primary, and would rather divert his followers to an event where he can plead for them to send him money. If he loses access to GOP campaign funds, he'll definitely need other ways to pay his legal bills.
Why does he get to use campaign funds for his legal bills? I don’t understand it. I thought that was illegal, like using campaign funds to pay off a sex worker…..
There are some wonky rules that let him move funds from one fund to another, usually to one with fewer restrictions on how the money can be used.
Well that stinks.
As the Church Lady would say, “How conveeeenient”.
The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency with 300 employees and the logical place for candidates and parties to be disqualified. The latter are required to be certified for its candidates to be placed on state or Federal ballots.
However, when it was created in 1975, its structure virtually guaranteed no "regulation". There are six commissioners, 3 Dems and 3 Reps. and is usually tied and unable to decide much of anything. In terms of the laws/regs it implements, they are 90% related to campaign financing.
Tom Timberman