‘The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution,’ read a filing from the former president’s attorneys
Legally, it’s a fine distinction. What his attorneys are arguing appears to be that, even if he did commit insurrection, the law in question doesn’t apply to the office of the president and, thus, not to Trump. On the surface, the logic is sound: Law applies if conditions are met; conditions were not met, therefore law does not apply.
The problem for Trump is that the law does apply,^1 so he should face the consequences.
If I had access to Westlaw or LexisNexis, I’d be interested to look into the caselaw. My concern is that the argument for specific word choice (i.e. “support” was specifically used instead of “preserve, protect, defend”) isn’t without some merit. I’m just glad he can never seem to hire competent attorneys. I’m hoping for a long, long, lonely life behind bars for his retirement years. (Though I know this isn’t one of his criminal cases.)
1- Assuming, of course, there remains any justice left in the US system. Unfortunately not a small assumption these days.