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she took the decision to take donald trump off the ballot in maine. secretary cech bellows, very good to have you on bbc news. good evening to you. i want to start with your decision to disqualify the former president from the primary ballot in maine because as he decided he engaged in insurrection. what made that decision? what convinced you he is ineligible? good evening and thank you for having me. it is really important for your viewers to understand the maine law process. every state is different. under the united states constitution, elections are held and it different voting rights are different ballot access laws. under maine law, if a candidate qualifies for the ballot, any registered maine voter may bring a challenge. that is what happened here. i qualified trump for the ballot and there were three challenges brought. by citizens of maine, and a couple cases, two former democratic state senators. that requires me under maine election law to hold an administrat ....
has just lost access to a presidential ballot in a second statech the secretary state from maine ruled that, quote, donald j. trump is not qualified to hold the office of president under section 3 of the 14th enent. it bars people who have engaged ipinsurrection from holding office. quote, the events of january 6, 2021, were unprecedented and tragic. an the evidence here demonstrates that t occurred at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing psint. she adds, quote, i am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on section 3 of the 14th amendment. i am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection. the main ruling comes just after a week before the colorado state supreme court reached the same conclusion, barring frump from the ballot there. for now, though, trump remains on the ballot in both states as the maine secretary stayed her decisio ....
history today by saying dante be on the presidential ballot there. it seems like a really fast 24 hours ago that you and i were having our first discussion of what nikki haley said when asked about the cause of the civil war. it really exploded since then. it is truly incredible that she, the governor of south carolina, cannot even talk about this issue without tying herself up in knots. it s truly astounding. we have your pressure david whyte with us tonight. oh he s perfect. originally booked of course as history professor as an expert on what caused the civil war, as are many high school students jean robinson s with us too, he s also an expert on what caused the civil war. but we will also get a chance to talk to professor blight about the 14th amendment, which is what is being used to knock non-trump off the ballots. he s very much an expert on that. and so much to come. lawrence, if you do me a favor, could you ask professor blight what he thinks frederi ....
tracks. carolyn manno, thanks so much. happy new year. coming up, we speak with morgan more artie with a look ahead to the massive college football matchups between alabama and michigan, texas and washington. so stick with us for us for that. all right. next hour of cnn this morning starts right now. good morning to you. 7:00 here on the east coast. we ve got, what, 17 more hours until we hit 2024. so happy new year eve to you. we start this morning with a new court filing from special counsel jack smith. he is urging an appeals court to reject former president donald trump s claims of presidential immunity in the 2020 election subversion case. jack smith, quote, says he threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office. trump s lawyers says unless he is impeached and convicted by the senate. let s go to cnn s zachary cohen. he s got more for us. reporter: perez special counsel is arguing that the former president donald trump is wrong in ....
our correspondent in kyiv, james waterhouse, gave me the latest on where the air strikes had happened and what had been hit. it s the first time in more than a year since a russian missile was able to penetrate kyiv s air defences, for example, and i think that is a reflection of air defences across ukraine being overwhelmed in the way that they have, you have heard what the air force is saying and i think that it s really telling something. more than 18 strategic bomber aircraft were used by russia, it says almost every type of missile was launched, the only ones weren t used were the ones launched from the sea and you take all of these things together, living things together, lviv in the west, that was far from the conflict, once a city for millions of ukrainians escaped to go on to the border to poland and romania, we have seen damage to a high rise building in odesa, some extensive damage in dnipro, where we are told a shopping centre was hit, kharkiv in the north ....