DENVER—By a 4-3 vote, though all seven justices agreed on the facts of the 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, the Colorado Supreme Court tossed Donald Trump off the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot on Tuesday.
In a case brought by six state Republican voters and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the majority invoked Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, saying his urging and ordering the Jan. 6, 2021, invasion makes him constitutionally disqualified from holding any office in the United States.
The majority barred Secretary of State Jena Griswold from putting the former Oval Office occupant on the ballot for the March Republican primary vote. The court stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump’s campaign already promised it would do just that. Colorado’s ballot deadline is Jan. 5.
“President Trump incited his followers” to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, invasion, and attempted coup d’état, the court said of Trump, currently the Republican front-runner for the 2024 nomination. “We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the majority said.
The 14th Amendment cited by the court was ratified in 1868 in the wake of the U.S. Civil War as part of an effort to ensure civil rights for formerly enslaved Americans. It had other provisions, as well, however.
Section 3 of the Amendment is aimed at keeping former Confederate leaders and traitors—from CSA President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee on down—from holding any office at the federal, state, or local level. Congress was determined to make sure that those who split from the United States in order to uphold the slaveocracy of the South would never again be in positions of power, as they violated their Constitutional oaths of office to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads:
“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.”
Trump, of course, had taken such an oath on Jan. 20, 2017, vowing to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. The lower court in Denver that first heard the case agreed with all the details of what Trump did, but said that because the Constitution doesn’t specifically mention the president or vice president, he wasn’t “an officer” of the U.S.
The Colorado court majority said that’s wrong.
The court laid out the details of the insurrection in detail, from Trump’s pre-invasion tweets to the Capitol invasion itself, to his supporters toting the Confederate flag through its corridors, to Trump’s hours of inaction when aides and campaign staffers pleaded with him to call off the dogs. Instead, he sat and watched them on TV before finally grudgingly telling them: “Go home. We love you.”
“We think this a spectacular opinion,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder told the media Tuesday night. “This is what the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind, and this is what they were preparing for.”
“Nobody has found it was not proven to be an insurrection.” The ruling “is not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country.”
Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for Peoples, agreed. “The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of Section 3,” told The Guardian. “Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same, if not worse.”
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the court majority said in the decision. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
The justices added, “We may not avoid our duty to decide a case merely because it may have political implications.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a constitutional law professor and member of the House Jan. 6 committee, praised the ruling. “It gives a lot of impetus to the voters, like the voters here in Colorado, to pursue this case. This is just a question of law…that’s got to be settled by the courts,” he told MSNBC.
“No president has ever tried to overthrow his own government.”
Speaking of political implications, the Colorado ruling tossed a second political hot potato in the Supreme Court’s lap, just as the Republican presidential primary season opens with the Iowa caucuses. The other is the immediate appeal by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith of Trump’s claim that as a one-time Oval Office occupant he’s perpetually exempt from criminal prosecution.
Courts in three other states—Arizona, Minnesota, and Michigan—have handled similar CREW complaints. Other cases are pending in other state capitals, including New York. The ruling in Colorado may now impact the cases in all those other states.
Trump “betrayed his oath…and…made himself ineligible,” plantiffs’ attorney Sean Grimsley said. “We hope and believe other states will now follow suit.”
Starting with Trump’s tweets and messages summoning violent supporters to Washington—“Be There! It will be wild!”—the Colorado majority went into detail about Trump’s role in the attempted coup d’état. Indeed, the recitation took up much of the 211-page opinion.
“Evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established President Trump engaged in insurrection,” it said, in language all seven justices agreed with. They went on:
“President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary.
“The evidence amply showed President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: Prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“As our detailed recitation of the evidence shows, President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection. Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully underway, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding Vice President Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.
“The record amply demonstrates President Trump fully intended to—and did—aid or further the insurrectionists’ common unlawful purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power in this country. He exhorted them to fight to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He personally took action to try to stop the certification. And for many hours, he and his supporters succeeded in halting that process.”
After the ruling, a Trump spokesman snidely replied: “Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot.”
Congressional Republicans were either silent or backed Trump. “They’re not after me; they’re after you,” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., tweeted to fellow MAGAites. Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel bemoaned “election interference.” Seeking the favor of Trump’s voting base, Vivek Ramaswamy announced he would withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary if the former president’s name is not on the ballot.
The official Trump campaign office immediately sent out a fundraising email after the decision was announced, calling it a “tyrannical ruling.”
Dodging the question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection, his lawyers have repeatedly argued that the 14th Amendment does not apply to the presidency, so the nature of his actions during the Jan. 6 coup attempt are irrelevant. They have attempted to rely on “freedom of speech” when any of Trump’s words of encouragement to the Capitol invaders have been brought up in court.
Trump’s attorneys know that when his deeds are examined it is obvious that he tried to overthrow democracy in the closing days of his presidency—something the Colorado justices had no hesitation in stating.
C.J. Atkins contributed to this article.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
Comments