Shenna Bellows' Ruling Trashed by Legal Analysts: 'Mind-Boggling'

The decision by Shenna Bellows to remove Donald Trump from Maine's 2024 ballot has been criticized by legal analysts, with one calling it "mind-boggling and comical."

Shenna Bellows, Maine's secretary of state, barred Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot under the Constitution's 14th amendment. This bars those ruled to have engaged in insurrection from holding public office. Trump denies any wrongdoing and has said that he is the victim of a political witch hunt aimed at derailing him as the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Newsweek has contacted Bellows by email on Friday to comment on this story.

In a statement about her decision, Bellows accused Trump of encouraging violence among his supporters during the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, when they stormed the government building to contest Joe Biden's presidential election victory.

"The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power," Bellows said.

She added: "I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it."

However, in response, Brett Tolman, a former U.S. attorney and executive director of Right on Crime, slammed Bellows' decision in a post on X, formerly Twitter. He called it "mind-boggling and comical."

Meanwhile, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig questioned whether the hearings were fair, in an interview with the broadcaster. He said Bellow heard from only one fact witness, a law professor, to come to her decision.

"She based her ruling on a lot of documents, but also YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court," Honig said.

Maine is the second state to bar the former president from their ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on December 19 that Trump should be disqualified from the state's ballot because of his alleged role in the riots.

However, lawsuits seeking to block the Republican in Minnesota and Michigan have failed, and on Thursday night, California's secretary of state formally rejected calls to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot in the state.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign, released a statement after Bellows' decision was announced calling her a "virulent leftist."

"The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden," Cheung said. "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter."

Cheung added: "Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump's name from the ballot. Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power."