(Headline USA) In one of the greatest travesties of American jurisprudence in modern memory, a far-left Colorado Supreme Court split from other states in ruling that the Republican Party had no right to determine its own candidate for president, and that activist judges instead had the power to do so by semantically redefining the meaning of “insurrection” to fit their own political objectives.
A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up an inevitable showdown in the nation’s highest court.
Trump has never been found guilt of insurrection, nor is he currently charged with it. His post-presidential impeachment, also led by partisan Democrats in the U.S. House, ultimately led to his acquittal in the U.S. Senate.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
It is but the latest in a stunning series of unprecedented lawfare attacks by the radical Left designed at subverting the system of justice into a political weapon to use against Trump and his million of supporters.
Despite the heavy weight and implications of their lopsided decision, the 4–3 verdict ultimately came down to the vote of a single judge.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote.
It overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the corrupt bench.
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” they claimed, despite their callous indifference to the underlying legal principles. “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.”
Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the nation’s highest court, which has the final say about constitutional matters.
“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement Tuesday night.
Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.
Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War.
It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
The Colorado case is the first where the plaintiffs succeeded. After a weeklong hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump indeed had “engaged in insurrection” but her ruling that kept him on the ballot was a fairly technical one.
Wallace had been under scrutiny herself for a series of donations she made to radical leftist politicians and activist groups, including one that she made after being appointed a judge but before assuming the bench.
The so-called insurrection provision explicitly says offices covered include senator, representative, electors of the president and vice president, and all others “under the United States,” but doesn’t name the presidency.
Trump’s attorneys argued that because the language in Section 3 refers to “officers of the United States” who take an oath to “support” the Constitution, it must not apply to the president, who is not included as an “officer of the United States” elsewhere in the document and whose oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
Trump has contended elsewhere that he was doing just that on Jan. 6 and in the leadup to it, as rampant evidence of vote fraud—both through illegal mail-in ballots and the possible off-site manipulation of voting machines—suggested that there was systemic manipulation in several key swing states.
Thousands of protesters convened at the U.S. Capitol to assert their First Amendment rights to assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances as the Joint Session of Congress was meeting to certify the disputed Electoral College vote for Democrat Joe Biden.
The state’s highest court didn’t agree, siding with anti-Trump activists who argued that it was nonsensical to imagine the framers of the amendment, fearful of former Confederates returning to power, would bar them from low-level offices but not the highest one in the land.
“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,” attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court in early December.
Trump never took up arms against the government, and the Jan. 6 dissidents who entered the U.S. Capitol were largely unarmed. The only casualties to die as the result of violence were unarmed Trump supporters who were victims of excessive police force—most notably, Ashli Babbitt.
Trump’s attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the writers of the amendment expected the Electoral College to prevent former insurrectionists from becoming president.
Trump attorney Scott Gessler also argued the attack was more of a “riot” than an insurrection.
That met skepticism from several of the justices.
“Why isn’t it enough that a violent mob breached the Capitol when Congress was performing a core constitutional function?” Justice William W. Hood III, an appointee of ethically challenged former Gov. John Hickenlooper, said during the Dec. 6 arguments. “In some ways, that seems like a poster child for insurrection.”
In the ruling issued Tuesday, the court’s majority dismissed the arguments that Trump wasn’t responsible for his supporters’ actions: “President Trump then gave a speech in which he literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol,” they wrote.
Colorado Supreme Court Justices Richard L. Gabriel (Hickenlooper), Melissa Hart (Hickenlooper), William W. Hood III and Monica Márquez (Ritter) ruled with the activists.
Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright (Hickenlooper) dissented, arguing the constitutional questions were too complex to be solved in a state hearing. Justices Maria E. Berkenkotter (Polis) and Carlos Samour (Hickenlooper) also dissented.
“Our government cannot deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law,” Samour wrote in his dissent.
“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office.”
The Colorado ruling stands in contrast with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which last month decided that the state party can put anyone it wants on its primary ballot. It dismissed a Section 3 lawsuit but said the plaintiffs could try again during the general election.
In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot. That ruling is being appealed.
The leftist group behind those cases, Free Speech For People, also filed another lawsuit in Oregon seeking to bounce Trump from the ballot there. The Colorado case was filed by another far-left group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Both groups are financed by leftist donors who also support President Joe Biden. Trump has blamed the president for the lawsuits against him, saying his rival is “defacing the constitution” to try to end his campaign.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
