Published Published January 4, 2024
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review last month’s historic ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that the 2024 Republican frontrunner should be barred from the state’s ballot under a Civil War-era insurrection clause.
Trump’s petition for a writ of certiorari — a formal order for a case to be heard before the Supreme Court — is separate from an appeal filed on Dec. 28 by the Colorado Republican Party, which is also a party to the case. It also follows two earlier briefs supporting an expedited review from the plaintiffs who brought the case in Colorado in September and from Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
A U.S. Supreme Court review has been widely anticipated following the Colorado Supreme Court’s seismic Dec. 19 ruling, in which a 4-3 majority of the court’s justices sided with the plaintiffs’ argument that Trump’s actions in relation to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualify him from office under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section 3 of the amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War but enforced only a handful of times in the last 150 years, prohibits a person who took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again.
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SOURCE: www.sourcenm.com
RELATED: Trump Petitions Supreme Court to Overturn Colorado Ruling
Former President Donald Trump, the front-running GOP candidate for president in 2024, looks on during a campaign event on Dec. 19, 2023 in Waterloo, Iowa. (Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Published Published January 3, 2024
Former President Trump has now petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the recent Colorado ruling declaring him to be an insurrectionist ineligible to be on the 2024 presidential ballot.
Filed Wednesday, the petition said the Colorado Supreme Court ruling wrongly excluded Trump from the 2024 primary ballot by preventing “voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate.”
“The question of eligibility to serve as President of the United States is properly reserved for Congress, not the state courts, to consider and decide,” it said.
The petition further argued that the Colorado Supreme Court misapplied Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment in its ruling by wrongfully classifying the former president as an “officer of the United States,” saying, “President Trump falls outside the scope of section 3.”
As a separate issue, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment can only apply to those who have “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.” President Trump was never an “officer of the United States” according to the U.S. Constitution’s text and structure.
Even on those very standards, the Colorado Supreme Court argued that the former president engaged in “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, which the petition said lacks merit.
“The Colorado Supreme Court erred in how it described President Trump’s role in the events of January 6, 2021,” the petitions adds. “It was not ‘insurrection’ and President Trump in no way ‘engaged” in ‘insurrection.’”
“‘Insurrection’ as understood at the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment meant the taking up of arms and waging war upon the United States,” it said. “By contrast, the United States has a long history of political protests that have turned violent.”
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SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Trump Takes Colorado Case to US Supreme Court Seeking to Get His Name Back on Ballot
Published Published January 3, 2024
Former President Donald Trump filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday calling for it to overrule the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove him from the 2024 presidential ballot.
The Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump from the ballot in a 4-3 ruling last month, citing the 14th Amendment.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment provides that anyone who has sworn an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” is ineligible for office.
The Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion amounted to participation in an insurrection. All seven justices were appointed by Democratic governors of the state.
It is a violation of federal law to engage in a rebellion or insurrection, with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Trump supporters have noted that he has not been charged with, much less convicted of, any such crime.
Trump campaign attorney Harmeet Dhillon posted on X, “It’s true. We just filed our … petition in the Colorado 14th Amendment case. Proud to stand on the side of the Constitution and with [Trump].”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court does not make a decision on whether to hear the case by Thursday, Trump’s name must be placed on the ballot, as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted on X.
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SOURCE: www.westernjournal.com
