No. of Recommendations: 3
"Before the 2020 election, Donald Trump lays the groundwork to reject the election results
if he loses and deploy political violence to stay in power."
Yep - that the argument that people claiming he's an insurrectionist lay out. But the counter-argument that Trump's team will lay out is pretty obvious - that being indifferent to whether people marching on the Capitol are armed is wholly different than being part of an insurrection. He inarguably doesn't care whether they're armed, perceiving no threat to himself - but that does not itself constitute planning, direction, participation in, or even encouragement of political violence. Nor (goes the argument) does it convert all of the other actions he was taking to try to get a determination that he had won the election into an insurrection or rebellion against the United States. There's a reason why Trump was never charged with sedition or insurrection, and this is a pretty thin reed. Despite the arguments laid out in the OP Law Review, this is not as self-evident a determination as whether someone who joined the actual government or armed forces of the Confederacy had engaged in rebellion.
Even if you stipulate that Trump engaged in criminal behavior to try to remain in power, I'm not sure that type of self-coup or autocoup falls within the meaning of the 14th Amendment - because it's not technically either a rebellion or an insurrection to stay in power, in contrast to dislodging someone else from power or overthrow the government itself.
