Constitutional Expert Rob Natelson Appears on KGVO’s Talk Back

As part of his monthly commitment to answer questions from the KGVO audience, Rob Natelson with the Independence Institute in Denver appeared on the Monday Talk Back show.

Natelson referenced an article he wrote for the Epoch Times, in which he debunked the idea that former President Trump fomented an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6.

“The argument is that Trump led an insurrection on January 6, and therefore he's an insurrectionist, and therefore, he can be declared disqualified by Congress to ever run for office again,” said Natelson. “The answer I reach in the column is no, there are just too many problems with that. One is the factual problem. They've never really established that he provoked that incursion into the capital. There's good evidence that he did not. Secondly, the incursion didn’t really rise to the level of insurrection. It was more like a riot.”

Natelson referenced another article stating that no one can be impeached by stating an opinion, such as Trump’s opinion that the election was stolen, or that voter fraud occurred. He mentioned a famous quote by one of the founding fathers, Edmund Randolph, the nation’s first Attorney General.

“He said no man ever thought of making a man impeachable because of an opinion, demonstrating that impeachment was not viewed as something to be used for political differences,” he said. “It was for high crimes and misdemeanors, and so in the impeachment prosecution, you saw some of the house managers, the house prosecutors like Jamie Raskin, essentially arguing that because Trump thought the election had been stolen from him, that this was an element in provoking insurrection.”

One listener challenged Natelson on a comment he made during the February visit on KGVO about mail in elections being unlawful under the Constitution.

“Congress may establish a time, necessarily a uniform time, when the electors are chosen, which basically means when we the people go to the polls,” he said. “Since we adopted this mail in ballot situation, with varying times from state to state, we violated federal law passed under the same day clause, which said that the election is supposed to be held on November 3.”

One more caller asked if there was any way under the Constitution to recall a sitting U.S. Senator, referring to Senator Jon Tester and his vote to make possible the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, to which Natelson replied there is a time specifically tailored to removing a U.S. Senator.

“I get very frustrated about this, because when I lived in Montana, people would gripe about Max Baucus, and every few years they want to recall Max Baucus,” he said. “And my response to that was ‘where the heck were you when Max Baucus was running for re election?’ You know, why weren’t you more active against him then? So the time to deal with US Senators is when they're up for reelection.”

Find out more about Rob Natelson’s work by visiting the Independence Institute’s website.