Jan. 18 (UPI) — Donald Trump on Thursday implored the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a decision from Colorado’s high court that effectively disqualified the former president from holding the presidency under a Civil War-era provision of the Constitution.
In December, Colorado’s high court ruled the former president was ineligible to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, when he incited a riot following his loss in the 2020 election, and encouraged raucous, angry protesters to march on the U.S. Capitol.
It was the first time in U.S. history that there has not been a peaceful transfer of power between one president and the next.
At Trump’s behest, protesters, some of them armed, overran barriers and the Capitol police, storming the building, breaking down doors and entering the building, then inciting panic among House members, who were in the process of voting to certify the election of then President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump called on the high court judges to “put a swift and decisive end” to efforts to keep him off the ballot, including the move by Colorado’s Supreme Court.
Trump’s lawyers claim in an opening brief to the Supreme Court that the challenges to his candidacy could disenfranchise millions of Americans and “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.”
High court justices will begin hearing arguments next month about whether the former president violated the “insurrection clause,” and whether he should be disqualified from running for president or holding the office again.
Trump’s legal brief presages a glimpse into the arguments his lawyers may use when they appear before the justices to argue the case on Feb. 8. They are asking the nation’s highest court to decide whether the Colorado Supreme Court was wrong to order Trump be kept off the state’s presidential primary ballot.
“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,” his lawyers wrote. “And even if President Trump were subject to section 3 he did not ‘engage in’ anything that qualifies as ‘insurrection.’ The court should reverse on these grounds and end these unconstitutional disqualification efforts once and for all.”
His lawyers argued that keeping Trump off the ballot in Colorado and, potentially, in other states, “will only delay the ballot-disqualification fight, and there is no shortage of legislators determined to use section 3 as a cudgel to bar President Trump from the general-election ballot or from taking office if this court leaves any wiggle room for them to do so.”
The ruling from Colorado’s high court marked the first time a challenge to Trump’s candidacy based on the 14th Amendment was successful, which prompted the former president and his legal team to go on the offensive.
In his appeal, Trump warns “chaos and bedlam” would ensue if Colorado or any other state is allowed to disqualify him from this year’s primary and general-election ballots.
