Maine has become the second US state to officially disqualify Donald Trump from seeking a new term as president in 2024. He was previously barred from appearing on the ballot in Colorado.
Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled on Thursday that Trump is ineligible to run for president, citing his alleged role in the 2021 United States Capitol riot, Reuters reports.
Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
"The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government," Bellows wrote in a 34-page ruling.
The decision can be appealed to a state Superior Court, and Bellows suspended her ruling until the court rules on the matter.
Trump's campaign said it would quickly file an objection to the "atrocious" decision.
Lawyers for Trump have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 riot were protected by his right to free speech.
The decision came after a group of former Maine lawmakers said that Trump should be disqualified based on a provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars people from holding office if they engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” after previously swearing an oath to the United States.
The former lawmakers -- Kimberley Rosen, Thomas Saviello and Ethan Strimling -- said in a statement that Bellows "stood on the side of democracy and our constitution in her decision to bar former President Donald Trump from Maine’s ballot."
Trump has been indicted in both a federal case and in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, but he has not been charged with insurrection related to the Jan. 6 attack. He leads opinion polls by a large margin in the race for the Republican nomination.
Colorado’s top court disqualified Trump from the state primary ballot on December 19, making him the first candidate in U.S. history to be deemed ineligible for the presidency for engaging in insurrection.
Trump has vowed to appeal the Colorado ruling to the Supreme Court and criticized ballot challenges as “undemocratic.” The Colorado Republican Party filed its own Supreme Court appeal on Wednesday.
Similar attempts to disqualify Trump in other states have been rejected. The top court in Michigan, a pivotal battleground state in the general election, declined on Wednesday to hear a case seeking to disqualify Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot.