Donald Trump's campaign team has lashed out at the election official who disqualified him from the state ballot in 2024's US presidential primary election.
On Thursday (local time), Maine's top election official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, concluded Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024, could not run under a constitutional provision that prevents insurrectionists from holding office.
Trump's campaign team said it will appeal the decision and attacked Bellows, calling her a "virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat".
"We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter," spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement, as reported by US media.
"Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy."
Cheung said Trump's campaign team knows the Constitution and US people are "on our side in this fight.
"President Trump's dominating campaign has a commanding lead in the polls that has dramatically expanded as Crooked Joe Biden's presidency continues to fail."
In her decision, Bellows put forward the case Trump "used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters" and "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".
On Wednesday, Trump's attorneys argued Bellows should have no part in the decision surrounding Trump's ballot eligibility, citing her past statements about the January 6 Capital riot that sparked the accusations of insurrection.
"The challengers have claimed that the events of January 6, 2021, constituted a violent insurrection and that President Trump somehow poses a danger from which Maine voters must be protected. Thus, the Secretary has already passed judgment on the Challengers' core assertions," Trump's lawyers wrote.
In Thursday's decision, Bellows called the request "untimely".
"Had the motion been timely, I would have determined that I could preside over this matter impartially and without bias," she wrote.
"My decision is based exclusively on the record before me, and it has in no way been influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of January 6, 2021."
Bellows has suspended the effect of her decision until the state's highest court rules on any appeal.
If the decision were to take effect, it would only apply to the state's March primary but its conclusion would likely also affect Trump's position going into the November 2024 general election.
