Oscar Stilley (L) in a KXAN interview about his S.B. 8-related lawsuit, (R) Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis attend a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Thursday Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A self-described "disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer" who previously made national headlines for suing a doctor for violating Texas' abortion ban is now suing former President Donald Trump and several of his allies, including members of his "elite strike force" legal team, in a bid to have them declared "insurrectionists" in federal court.
Oscar Stilley filed the lawsuit pro se on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas against Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, Ray Stallings Smith III, Sidney Powell, Robert Creeley, David Shafer, Stephen Lee, former GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and 1-99 John and Jane Does.
The suit begins with Stilley saying he "plans to register as a Republican and vote in the upcoming Republican primary election on March 5, 2024, also known as 'Super Tuesday,'" though his felony tax evasion and conspiracy convictions continue to pose problems for him in that regard.
Calling those convictions "utterly bogus," the plaintiff said he has to complete his federal sentence before he can lawfully register as a Republican and vote. He said he is currently challenging an "unlawfully imposed" 33-month supervised release in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
With that as the backdrop, the once self-described "libertarian sorta fella" asserted that Trump and other defendants named "in their individual capacities have engaged in insurrection, within the meaning of US Constitution Amendment 14, Section 3," and "may not lawfully seek or occupy any office or profit or trust under any state or the United States."
The language of the 14th Amendment Stilley refers to is central to other litigation and legal debates that maintain Trump should be barred from holding office again as a consequence of trying to overturn an election he lost, culminating in the Jan. 6 rebellion against lawful authority. The Constitution says:
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.
Stilley, also suing Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston (R), ran down the list of Trump and his allies and said each should be banned from holding office — whether public office or the "office of attorney at law."
He asserted that the allegations in the Fulton County state RICO indictment and the Washington, D.C., federal Jan. 6 indictment, "taken in their entirety, amount to 'insurrection' within the meaning of Amendment 14, Section 3 of the US Constitution."
The plaintiff theorizes that, in the cases of Powell, Ellis, Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, and other lawyers, the "office of attorney at law, with its customary oath to uphold the US constitution and a state constitution, is a 'triggering' office, for purposes of 14th Amendment analysis."
The plaintiff, again a disbarred lawyer, claimed he was neither out to get other lawyers and their First Amendment rights, nor trying to "chill attorneys from the vigorous, even aggressive representation of their clients."
"Plaintiff Stilley seeks nothing but justice, with the balance held nice and true, with no favor to great or small, rich or poor, weak or powerful," he said.
The court docket shows that the case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr., a Barack Obama appointee.
Stilley is asking Moody to enter a declaratory judgment that the "individual capacity defendants are insurrectionists, who may not lawfully seek or occupy any office or profit or trust under any state or the United States" and "order the Secretary of State not to place the name of Donald J. Trump on the primary or general ballots in Arkansas, for this election cycle or any subsequent election cycle."
Read the lawsuit here.
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