(Headline USA) The Michigan Court of Appeals said Thursday it won’t stop former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot, turning aside challenges from far-left activists who sought to use his role in the 2021 uprising at the U.S. Capitol to disqualify him.
Rejecting the appeals, including one spearheaded by the activist group Free Speech for People, the court affirmed two lower court rulings without determining whether Trump falls under the insurrection clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“Who to place on the primary ballot is determined by the political parties and the individual candidates,” the appeals court said in a 3-0 opinion, citing Michigan law.
The court further said Trump’s possible spot on a general election ballot was not ripe for consideration, shooting down a possible trap that the Wisconsin court had left open, that Trump could win the nominating contest only to have activist judges step in and render him ineligible for the election itself.
The two-sentence clause in the 14th Amendment has been used only a handful of times since the years after the Civil War. It’s likely that one of the lawsuits challenging Trump eventually will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the insurrection clause.
The Michigan court decision was similar to one from the Minnesota Supreme Court, which said Trump could stay on that state’s primary ballot there because the election is a party-run contest.
In one of the Michigan lawsuits, the anti-Trump plaintiffs included Bob LaBrant, a longtime Republican who was a lawyer and political strategist for decades at the state Chamber of Commerce.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, “The Soros-funded Democrats have once again failed in their desperate attempt to interfere in the election via a bad-faith interpretation of the 14th Amendment.”
Despite the fact that far-left activists are attempting to label the event as an “insurrection” in order to push their wild legal moonshot, growing evidence has shown that the Jan. 6 protest was, in fact, hardly the national travesty that the left-wing media and Democrats made it out to be.
Too bad for CNN, we’ll take the TRUTH on Jan. 6 mainstream. There is clear evidence that there was at the very least entrapment of peaceful protestors, similar to the fake Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot & countless other cases. The FBI won’t admit how many undercover officers… pic.twitter.com/SBuc6nnymg
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 14, 2023
Recently released video has confirmed that most of the people who entered into the Capitol conducted themselves peacefully and respectfully, some even being ushered by law-enforcement.
Meanwhile, video also seemed to suggest that there was a considerable presence of plain-clothed government agents who appeared to be working to instigate and foment the violence, and that the U.S. Capitol Police themselves played a significant role in riling up the crowd that had gathered outside the Capitol by firing tear gas and rubber bullets before any provocation had necessitated the use of force.
Officials with the Biden Justice Department thus far have arrested more than 1,200 participants, including several members of the media who were covering the events there.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
