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Notes -
that's a very cheeky opinion by the court. they find that the 14th amendment doesn't apply to Trump so there is no finding against Trump but then include a bunch of disparaging stuff about him that will never been challenged on an appeal. but this courts opinion on Brandenburg would not be held up by higher courts. they even include a case where the plain language used by the accused was much worse than Trump and the the accused was not convicted but then magically read further than the plain language of Trump to find that he did commit insurrection.
My understanding is that the bar to overturn the factual findings of a trial court is pretty high. I believe it has to be demonstrated that no reasonable judge could have come to that conclusion.
I agree the opinion is cheeky - the part ruling that section 3 doesn't apply to the presidency feels like she's begging to be overturned on appeal (and because it's a matter of law rather than a finding of fact it can be overruled more easily).
That isn’t a factual finding; it is a legal conclusion and that is reviewed de novo. The “problem” is the circuit or scotus probably don’t need to address that interim conclusion to decide the issue.
So basically people who want to claim “Trump is an insurrectionist” can point to this case “that even the Republican SCoTUS” didn’t dispute while ignoring that disputing it isn’t relevant.
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