A Maine state representative is seeking to impeach Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after Bellows decided that former President Donald Trump should be removed from the presidential ballot in her state.
On Thursday, Bellows, a Democrat, announced that in response to petitions filed to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot, she had ruled that Trump was covered by a section of the 14th Amendment that bars those who have engaged in insurrection against the United States from taking office.
The ruling was suspended in anticipation of appeals.
On the same day the ruling was issued, Republican state Rep. John Andrews announced in a Facebook post his filing of a “request with the Maine Revisor’s Office for a Joint Order to impeach” Bellows.
“I wish to file a Joint Order, or whichever is the proper parliamentary mechanism under Mason’s Rules, to impeach Secretary of State Shenna Bellows,” Andrews said in the post.
“I wish to impeach Secretary Bellows on the grounds that she is barring an American citizen and 45th President of the United States, who is convicted of no crime or impeachment, their right to appear on a Maine Republican Primary ballot,” he said.
Andrews based his claim on the Maine Constitution’s “Article IV: Part 1st: Section 8 ‘Power of impeachment. The House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment,” his Facebook post said.
“Donald J. Trump has met all qualifications for the March 2024 Republican Presidential Primary. He should be allowed on the ballot. This is raw partisanship and has no place in the offices of our state’s Constitutional Officers,” the legislator wrote.
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“This is hyper-partisanship on full display. A Secretary of State APPOINTED by legislative Democrats bans President Trump from the 2024 ballot so that she can jockey for position in the 2026 Democrat Primary for Governor. Banana Republic isn’t just a store at the mall,” Andrews said.
He said the secretary of state’s ruling was political and not based on the facts.
Bellows “has unilaterally disenfranchised 300,060 Maine voters with this partisan move,” Andrews told Fox News on Friday.
The Republican painted her as a political appointee serving political masters.
“In Maine, the people do not elect the secretary of state, the attorney general or the treasurer. They are chosen by elected by party insiders in the Legislature,” he said. “So it makes the position inherently political.
“And Shenna Bellows should know that. She should be going out of her way to be nonpartisan.”
He said she “swore an oath to the Constitution and not the Democrat Party.”
Andrews said he was defending the Constitution.
“Our nation is a republic,” he said. “Maine is made up of citizens and not subjects in the duchy of Shenna Bellows.”
Maine is among the many states where efforts to use the 14th Amendment against Trump have been attempted. Some, as in Minnesota, have failed. In Colorado, however, a court ordered that Trump be yanked from the ballot, a ruling that is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
