I'm Jonathan Gaypart in for Alex Wagner. We are following big breaking news this evening.

Maine's Secretary of State, Sheena Bellows, has decided that former President Trump is

ineligible to appear on that state's 2024 Republican

primary ballot because he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th

almost three years ago. With her ruling, Maine has now become the second state to say that Trump is ineligible

to appear on the 2024 Republican primary ballot.

The Bellows decision comes a week after the Colorado Supreme Court issued a similar ruling.

That ruling is now being appealed by both sides to the nation's highest court.

The nine justices of the Supreme Court are being petitioned to settle the issue

of whether Trump is barred from serving as president under section three of the 14th

amendment which bars any candidate from holding the office who engaged in insurrection.

In her ruling tonight, Maine Secretary of State wrote, and I quote, I have little trouble

concluding that the events of January 6th, 2021 were an insurrection within the

meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

The record establishes that Mr. Trump over the course of several months in culminating on January 6th, 2021,

used the 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. 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. The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the

tender laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a Democratic

election and then chose to light a match.

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