LLI, this link, states the federal statutory definition of a crime:
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
Amendment 14, section 3, makes no reference to charging, trial, or conviction of any crime, Neither as a precursor to disqualification, nor otherwise. Nor is exoneration of any criminal liability in a judicial proceeding indicated as affecting the section's reach. Nor is any procedure set to decide issues under the section, including no designation of a state's civil authority having power to decide:
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The Maine Secretary of State, after first noting a power and need to make a decision where a candidate's qualification for office had been duly challenged, and after stating her grounds for making that decision against candidate Trump being on the Maine 2024 presidential ballot, properly noted,
online Maine SoS decision, at p.32
The decision has been made by the proper decision maker, and published along with its supporting rationale and evidence of record. However Maine law allows an SoS decision to be judicially reviewed by one aggrieved, a path exists for Trump to follow. He is not entitled by law, yet, to demand a federal criminal conviction of record before he can be kept off a ballot, if he would be claiming such a right or power to so demand under Amend. 14, sect. 3.
As the cliche goes, free speech does not allow one to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. There are limitations. Firing up a mob to passionately interfere with Constitutional Congressional action certifying an election, is not protected speech. There is much policy argument to be made for why this is so.
The Crabgrass understanding is that Trump has put the question in Maine under judicial review. Bless his likelihood of prevailing, as he can litigate the question up to SCOTUS review, if cert is granted. Which it will be.
In Colorado and now in Maine a factual record has been built. While appellate review of questions of law are decided de novo, the factual record - the evidence as cited by the Secretary of State and as decided of record as factually correct by the hearing judge in Colorado would be disturbed only if there were exceptional error.
The ultimate question of law is how Amend. 14, Sect. 3 should be read where the question is one of civil law and not criminal law.
BOTTOM LINE: Qualification for office is a civil law question. In the case of a sole disqualification premised upon conduct or actions, unlike place of birth, or age, the decision criteria are not simple; and SCOTUS will opine.
_________UPDATE________
Does Trump have a right to insist whether his conduct was "insurrection" sufficient to disqualify his being on a ballot for office be determined by a civil jury; where unanimity is not required, and proof by preponderance of the evidence, (i.e., more likely than not), is the required standard of evidence weighing? Has he preserved or waived that question in Colorado? Or might he lawfully demand he be on a ballot in the absence of a criminal conviction? And then is it preemptively a federal question, or one of state law; state by state? Did a statutory definition of "insurrection" exist at the time Amend 14, sect 3 was ratified? What, without sufficient instruction in the Constitution, itself, should a reviewing court of last resort say?
Wait and see. What SCOTUS says, will be governing. Once the opining is over.
FURTHER: The electoral college as per original intent, and then now as in practice, throws a curve ball.
Original intent, voters are presented with electors running as such. Then as the two party stranglehold evolved, each party offered its one slate. As that later happened, the ballot does not present names of electors at all, but a party's candidates, president and vice president are named on the ballot, and one party prevails with its electors going to DC, etc.
Original intent was electors winning on their own name and merit would be voted in by majority vote, and then would choose a winner, and the candidate getting the second most votes would be VP. Now, that in practice, is outdated as a reality.
So, if a ticket wins and then the presidential candidate is in a proper way deemed disqualified to assume office, does the right to the office devolve to the party's ticket choice for VP, or to the candidate getting the next greatest number of electors voting for president? And in that instance would the President and VP offices be split, or what? Crabgrass makes no claim to know how such questions would properly be resolved in today's two (tweedle dee and tweedle dum) party stranglehold over the nation. Elevate the VP on the ticket where lead dog ends up not qualified, or next highest vote getter - other party - for President?
A sane answer, dump the electoral college and move to popular vote count being determinative, so that one person, one vote, becomes a true thing.
The eighteenth century politics of having the nailed on junk of an "electoral college" being in any way viewed as a good idea, then, has long faded into irrelevance, but the skeleton remains to haunt. Why? Because Montana and Wyoming and the Dakotas like it as a leg up over the weight of legitimacy of New York and California, etc., being the major players. And that is why swing state electioneering is now predominant, to where a swing state vote, in fact, counts more determinative in things relative to a vote in a red state or in a blue state.
It sucks.
It is stupid.
As stupid as having and being forced to tolerate a de facto two party stranglehold.
Figure on your own a better way - then wrestle with htf to get there.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Trump's appeal in Maine is reported by Axios, which linked to the actual filed pleading as posted online. In arguing above against there being any wisdom to the Electoral College, the Trump appeal of the "final agency action" is an expected, routine filing as Crabgrass sees things, except:
21. Even if Maine law authorized the Secretary to consider challenges to President Trump's candidacy under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment (which it did not), The Secretary could not properly have considered Section Three and erred as a matter of law in doing so, for the further reasons that:
a. Disqualification of a presidential candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment presents a political question reserved for the Electoral College and Congress;[...]
c. Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment bars persons otherwise subject to its disqualification from holding specified offices, not from running for them or from being elected to them. By barring President Trump from the ballot, the Secretary unlawfully violated the holding of U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, S14 U.S. 779 (1995), by altering or modifying the Constitution's qualifications for federal office;
This particular line of argument, that the resolution of Sect. 3 things would await any qualification question reaching the Electoral College; i.e., if Trump runs and wins, then the question ripens for decision, it being premature as a case and controversy otherwise, particularly at the ballot level, with a key argumentative focus upon the word "holding" and not "seeking" or "running" which are the steps preliminary to the ripening of a question among Electors of capacity to "hold" office.
That is a creative argument, in what largely is a vacuum of precedent, and it hangs together logically. It is consonant with the Minnesota Supreme Court's holding that in a primary election there is no statute or precedent that says a political party cannot run a candidate ineligible to hold the office at issue. (There the question of a general election ballot was left hanging, but the holding is at the primary election level under Minnesota law parties of a qualifying size are entitled to ballot access in primary election, and able to advance whomever they choose; while beyond the stranglehold-two, the "party" focus is a hurdle for third parties to qualify in order to have a voice.)
Presumably the mention of Electoral College and Congress looks to the final language of Amend 14, Sect 3, where a super majority of Congress can overrule an assertion at the Electoral College level of a candidate being unqualified, per that amendment section.
Realistically, the argument boils down to original intent = EC + Congress; while today's reality is that the formality of Electors showing up and being counted has become so rote that the likelihood of any holding of unqualified status over insurrection is non-existent. I.e., if the argument is accepted based on some original intent nonsense, the Sect. 3 becomes an actual nullity, with no actual, practical reach.
Under that argument the bottom line is Trump gets to be on every state ballot despite his fomenting a riot Jan. 6, 2021.
A creative argument, yes. A good outcome from it, no way.
But one could see the Supremes - this bunch - loving it as a weasel-way out of this present situation which would also forestall "on-the-ballot contest" mischief continuing into the future, where "insurrection" might be cheapened by repeated weakened claims that Sect. 3 applies for this or that.
_________UPDATE________
Ignorance is not irredeemable. Admitting Constitutional ignorance, and remembering original text and not how the 12th Amendment or its successor the 20th Amenement set procdeures, (both passed before my birth), the 20th Amendment governs and seems to fit better into the Trump Maine Petition for review - Wikipedia presenting the text, in relevant part stating:
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died, the Vice President-elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President-elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
The 12th Amendment requires separate ballots for President and Vice President and requires a majority of Elector votes for one to advance and hold either office.
That seems the root of the "qualify" language above, yet A.14, sect 3 adds the insurrection bar to being qualified to hold either of the two office. Age and birth also being areas where a failure to qualify may apply; yet it appears the question of qualifying by Elector majority or otherwise being unqualified was contemplated to be addressed by Electors and Congress.
Do the Amendments bar states from judging before that questions of qualification to hold the office prior to Electors voting, with states having jurisdiction over their ballots as well as whether to have Electors going winner-take-all or proportionately.
It seems that states having that latter power over elections within their borders, how Electors are allocated, expresses an intent that states hold power and jurisdiction over their ballots and Elector law.
All that noted, SCOTUS shall resolve the question and if individual states can disqualify party choices from ballots the resulting chaos might be void as against pubic policy to where federal preemption is imposed. Open choice being a sound policy, holding that A.14, sect. 3, was a limited provision related to the Civil War insurrection, and anachronistic for our times, with/without exceptions.
Again, SCOTUS shall - within Electoral College constraints - set a road map, and likely shall decide whether Congress may act to set rules differently, and if so, when and how. The key question remains, does A.14, sect. 3 get applied at a state's ballot decision making level, or does it only ripen for consideration when Electors convene.
The Trump position in Maine is take things to the Electors, and if Republicans get a majority of Electors because of election day voting, they will surely not disqualify their own candidates so that, practically, A.14, Sect.3 becomes a nullity. Ditto if Democrats gain the election day majority of Electors. With only two parties, Sect. 3 would die, if a multi-party future evolves, we shall see how that works out.
Vegas should start taking bets on SCOTUS cases, after oral argument, before a decision is issued, there could be action. If there were to be that, and it grew legs to where lots of betting volume evolved, it could get even more favors for Clarence.
__________FURTHER UPDATE________
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/12/30/what-jack-smith-didnt-say-in-his-double-jeopardy-response/