Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that removed him from the state’s ballot, arguing that other states are following suit with similar legal challenges and that preventing Americans from being able to vote for him in the 2024 Republican primary would “unleash chaos and bedlam.”
President Trump’s attorneys made their request in an opening brief filed with the court on Jan. 18 ahead of oral arguments scheduled to take place before the justices on Feb. 8.
Those oral arguments come after the Colorado court, which is composed entirely of Democrat appointees, determined in its 4–3 ruling in December that the 45th president had engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol and is thus not eligible to run for president.
That ruling marked the first time the Constitution’s “insurrection clause” has been used to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot.
Lawyers for President Trump noted in Thursday’s filing that efforts are underway in more than 30 states to remove their client from primary and general election ballots based on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause” which bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.
“The Court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and which promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” they wrote.
President Trump’s legal team took aim at the ruling by Colorado’s top court, arguing that it is “based on a dubious interpretation” of the 14th Amendment under the Constitution.
Trump ‘Not an Officer of the United States’
Specifically, the law disqualifies those who took an oath of office “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” and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from membership in Congress or the Electoral College or holding any federal or state office, “civil or military.”
President Trump’s lawyers noted the language in the clause; arguing their client is not an “officer of the United States” and did not engage in insurrection.
They further noted he has not been convicted or even formally accused of insurrection under the 14th Amendment.
“The Court should reverse the Colorado decision because President Trump is not even subject to section 3, as the President is not an ‘officer of the United States’ under the Constitution. And even if President Trump were subject to section 3 he did not ‘engage in’ anything that qualifies as ‘insurrection,” his lawyers wrote.
The brief further argues that “nothing in Colorado’s election code requires the secretary of state to evaluate the qualifications of presidential primary candidates” and that the secretary of state also had “no duty” to “verify or second guess the candidate’s sworn representations, or to exclude presidential candidates from the ballot if the secretary disbelieves or disagrees with the candidate’s sworn representations.”
GOP Lawmakers Back Trump
Elsewhere in the brief filed on Thursday, the Republican Presidential candidate’s lawyers denied claims that he engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, stating that he had instead “repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and law and order.”
“Nothing that President Trump did in response to the 2020 election or on January 6, 2021, even remotely qualifies as ‘insurrection’” his attorneys wrote.
“No prosecutor has attempted to charge President Trump with insurrection … in the three years since January 6, 2021, despite the relentless and ongoing investigations of President Trump,” they added.
Nearly 200 Republican lawmakers backed President Trump in his legal challenge; signing a separate brief Thursday calling on the Supreme Court to keep him on the 2024 ballots.
Lawmakers argued the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision “severely intrudes” on Congressional powers over the insurrection clause by “allowing enforcement of Section 3 without congressional authorization, and then by concluding that Section 3 authorizes a state to de-ballot a candidate.”
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s opinion so broadly interpreted ‘engage in’ that it sailed right past President Trump’s repeated statements to his supporters—both before the breach of the Capitol and after it was breached—telling them to act peacefully, and that he later told them via video to ‘go home now,’” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “It is hard to imagine an actual insurrectionist quickly asking for peace and encouraging disbandment.”
A group of GOP secretaries of state also asked the court to prevent fellow secretaries of state from disqualifying presidential candidates from the 2025 ballots.
Thursday’s filings with the nation’s highest court come after President Trump was removed from the ballot in Maine, although that decision has been put on hold pending the outcome of the Colorado case, and he remains on the ballot scheduled to take place on March 5 for now.
The lies, cons, deceptions, hypocrisy, and treachery of this treasonous, woke, socialist Democrat Party cabal and their useful idiot supporters know no bounds. The Democrat Party will do or say Anything to dictate control over the U.S. and We the People.
Dec. 19, 2023 Unelected judges (appointed by Democrats) on the Colorado Supreme Court have ruled that
the Republic does NOT belong to the people. We the People are nothing more than tax paying servants to this treasonous Democrat Party.
With the way that the satanic left are going the only thing they want is to have total control over the people. The Satan worshipping (DEMON)crats want to gave total control over the people and the country. The byden said it himself that the people should be slaves to the government the way he wants.
The way the government is going things are going to go south real fast if byden gets in again. The way that Colorado is doing things are completely against the CONSTITUTION, there was never a case for any kind of insurrection of any kind or type. The different states are assuming that TRUMP has been convicted of some type of insurrection or other but no case has been brought up.what they are doing is assuming that he committed those acts as they only want the hated communist satan worshipping demoncrats on the ballot.
Why do you think in SO MANY STATEs, there’s just a one party system in control.. BECAUSE LEFTISTS can’t abide anyone ELSE being in charge.
If the Supreme Court Liberals prevail and confirm Colorado’s ability to use the Constitution’s “insurrection clause” to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot, It will be January 6th all over again with the March on Washington headed straight for the Supreme Court and the Whitehouse rather than the Congress, and THE PEOPLE will use their own “insurrection clause” implied by the second amendment right to bear arms to remove the perpetrators of this unconstitutional fraud from positions in government. Make no mistake, if McConnell had not blocked Garland from the court this would be a whole different ball game today, and Obama’s ability to fundeMENTALLY change America into his own image of secular socialism would be an even greater impediment to Making American Great Again! Treat the next election not as a problem, but an opportunity to make this right, once and for all. We now know them by their deeds and fruits, that have exposed how naked their truths really were when relied upon to perform, in the hands of socially corrupt men.
I find it trembling that NO ONE wants to discuss the COUP D’état the deep state and Hillary’s campaign attempted on President Trump! It’s all Jan 6th, the COUP, nothing but crickets and silence..
BECAUSE to dems, THAT WAS “Justified”…