October 3 — An incredibly conservative Republican lawyer from Texas is attempting to get Donald Trump off the ballot in West Virginia.
John Anthony Castro is a tax consultant and a Republican presidential candidate himself and he filed a lawsuit attempting to disqualify Trump from getting on the ballot in the state.
The West Virginia Republican Party chair is fighting back with legal action.
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM asked, “How is this not election interference? This ridiculous going state to state and trying to get Donald Trump off the ballot and yet we’re trying to find all kinds of esoteric election interference when it comes to Trump and his people, from before he was elected throughout his presidency. Oh election interference, election interference. Here’s true election interference and it’s rampant.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “This guy, he’s sort of a well known gadfly. He is a Republican, we should say he’s a very conservative Republican lawyer in Texas and he over the years stirs up these things. Going back about a month ago, you remember there was that University of Pennsylvania law review article by these two legal scholars that are associated with the Federalist Society, floating this idea, providing a roadmap of sorts on how you might get Trump disqualified from ballots based on this obscure provision in the US Constitution.”
Castro took up the charge.
Barkdoll said, “He’s now up to five or six states where he’s filing these lawsuits. He’s using that University of Pennsylvania law review article as his guidance to try to get Trump off the ballot. I really don’t see him getting success with these efforts. I think there’s already been one hearing in one of the states in Florida where the judge was really skeptical. But Castro is indicating he may file more of these. I’m not sure that this stopped in West Virginia yesterday. He may very well file another dozen of these over the next few weeks to see what different state courts will say about this.”
Jansen added, “The fact that he’s Republican really means nothing. There’s plenty of establishment Republicans who would like to abuse the system to keep Trump away from voters. We only see the people who love Trump hardening more and more with their devotion to him as these ridiculous lawsuits keep coming forward. These attempts, really attempts to keep somebody off the ballot in ways that we’ve never seen in the United States before which I find terrifying. But as some pointed out when you keep likening MAGA Republicans to brown shirt Nazis, well, then people start justifying using just about anything to keep those people from power. I don’t get it. We see lots of abuses of power from the far left right now, lots of onerous executive orders and mandates being put on people and yet they try to keep making this boogeyman of MAGA Republicans with this ridiculous abuse of power here.”
Barkdoll noted, “Even though I don’t think this guy is going to be successful in any of these state courts, there is this scenario where you could get a very progressive leftist Secretary of State in a given state that steps in and says I’m invoking this constitutional provision to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. I hope that doesn’t happen because I think if that happens, we’re on a very slippery slope, not just from a legal standpoint, but the public I think would be outraged if you started to see that happen. But that’s another theory that’s floating around out there. Forget about the court system. Just find a sympathetic Secretary of State somewhere that will unilaterally issue a directive to keep Trump off the ballot based on this University of Pennsylvania law review article.”
Jansen pointed out, “And making everybody doubt the legal system in the United States. When they talk about a threat to democracy, I just want to cry because it is these actions that are causing everyone to doubt this system. This is the threat to our representative Republic democracy, it’s extraordinarily threatening to it and yet we keep hearing Republicans are the big threat to democracy.”
