Trump asks US Supreme Court to overturn Colorado ruling removing him from ballot
By Joan Biskupic, Kaitlan Collins, Devan Cole, Marshall Cohen, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — Donald Trump has formally asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado state Supreme Court ruling that removed him from the state’s 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist clause.”
“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” attorneys for the former president wrote in the filing with the court, which was obtained by CNN.
The Supreme Court is facing mounting pressure to settle the question of whether Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, can be disqualified from holding public office, as state courts and election officials have come to differing conclusions across the country. The first contests of the 2024 primary begin in weeks.
The high court is separately involved in other matters that could impact the federal criminal case against the former president.
Trump’s appeal comes nearly a week after the Colorado GOP, which is also a party in the case, filed a separate appeal, and two weeks after the Colorado ruling came down. The ruling has been put on hold while appeals play out and Colorado’s top election official has already made clear that Trump’s name will be included on the state’s primary ballot when it’s certified on January 5 – unless the US Supreme Court says otherwise.
But it’s unlikely the high court would resolve the case as quickly as this week. If the justices do take up the case and conclude Trump is ineligible for public office, then any votes cast for him wouldn’t count. The state’s primary is set for Super Tuesday on March 5.
Eric Olson, one of the Colorado attorneys arguing against Trump’s eligibility, said on CNN’s “The Source” that he expects the Supreme Court will take up the case and is “optimistic” that the justices will see that “there really isn’t a close case here.”
“I think this court has shown a willingness to step aside from sort of the partisan frame on these hard issues that are important to our democracy,” Olson said.
Trump ‘in no way’ engaged in insurrection, lawyers argue
Trump’s legal team is arguing that that the “question of eligibility” for the presidency should be determined by Congress, not the states, and that the Colorado Supreme Court erred when it ruled that an insurrection occurred on January 6, 2021, and that the former president “engaged” in the insurrection.
The stunning 4-3 decision issued by the Colorado Supreme Court on December 19 said Trump is constitutionally ineligible to run in 2024 because the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding office covers his conduct on January 6, 2021.
“President Trump incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” the Colorado justices wrote in their 134-page majority opinion.
“The Colorado Supreme Court erred in how it described President Trump’s role in the events of January 6, 2021,” Trump’s filing stated on Wednesday. “It was not ‘insurrection’ and President Trump in no way ‘engaged’ in ‘insurrection.’”
Trump argues 14th Amendment’s ‘insurrectionist ban’ doesn’t apply to presidency
Trump’s attorneys also argued to the justices that the Constitution’s so-called insurrectionist ban does not apply to the presidency.
“Thus, to find that section 3 includes the presidency, one must conclude that the drafters decided to bury the most visible and prominent national office in a catch-all term that includes low ranking military officers, while choosing to explicitly reference presidential electors,” the filing states. “This reading defies common sense and is not correct.”
“The Constitution’s text and structure make clear that the president is not an ‘officer of the United States,’” they added.
A lower-court judge in Colorado had initially said that the ban does not apply to the presidency, but the state’s Supreme Court decision undid that ruling. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says oath-breaking insurrectionists can’t serve as senators, representatives, presidential electors, “or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” But it doesn’t mention the presidency.
Trump’s attorneys also argued that barring him from the Colorado state primary ballot, “if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate.”
Among their concerns with the lower-court ruling, Trump’s attorneys said that the Colorado Supreme Court “dismissed out of hand President Trump’s argument that section 3 bars individuals only from holding office, and not from running for or being elected to office.”
Trump’s attorneys also contend Colorado law doesn’t require – or allow – a secretary of state or the courts to “purge” candidates from primary ballots “based on their own assessments of a candidate’s qualifications.”
Trump sends full text of his January 6 speech to the justices
Despite the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021, and court findings that Trump’s incendiary speech that day at the Ellipse inspired some of his supporters to participate in the attack, Trump argued in his petition to the justices that the speech called for peaceful protesting and included the full transcript of the speech in his filing.
“President Trump never told his supporters to enter the Capitol, either in his speech at the Ellipse or in any of his statements or communications before or during the events at the Capitol. To the contrary, his only explicit instructions called for protesting ‘peacefully and patriotically,’ to ‘support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,’ to ‘[s]tay peaceful,’ and to ‘remain peaceful,’” his attorneys wrote.
Trump has unsuccessfully pushed this argument in state and federal courts, which found that he incited violence when he told supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” to “take back our country.”
In an appendix filed with the court, Trump’s lawyers included the full text of his speech.
Other states are also forcing the issue
Though the ruling from Colorado only applies to that state, a potential decision from the US Supreme Court could settle the matter for the entire nation. Courts in several other states have also reviewed challenges to Trump’s eligibility, though no such case made it as far as the one in Colorado.
Last week, Maine’s secretary of state removed Trump from that state’s 2024 primary ballot, and the former president’s team on Tuesday appealed that decision in state court.
And the Oregon Supreme Court could soon rule on a bid to remove Trump from that state’s primary and general election ballots because of his role in the January 6 insurrection.
A group of Republican and independent voters filed the Colorado lawsuit, in coordination with a liberal government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
They told the Supreme Court on Tuesday they also want the justices to make the final decision.
“This Court’s settled precedent holds that the Constitution provides no right to confuse voters and clutter the ballot with candidates who are not eligible to hold the office they seek,” the voters wrote in the filing. They asked the justices to focus on two specific questions: whether Trump is disqualified from running for office and whether states are able to enforce the 14th Amendment’s clause absent federal legislation.
“Whether the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a former President (and current presidential primary front-runner) who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution from holding office again is a question of paramount national importance,” they said in the filing. “Because 2024 presidential primary elections are imminent, there is no time or need to let these issues percolate further.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold similarly asked the justices Tuesday to answer whether Trump can be removed from the ballot and provided them with a timetable of impending election deadlines that her office is required to meet.
Griswold on Wednesday said the Trump legal team’s argument “doesn’t make sense.”
“A president, the person who has arguably the most power in this country should not be able to do that type of action and run again, when every other elected official would be barred from doing so,” Griswold told CNN’s Abby Phillip on “NewsNight,” adding that the Supreme Court “should tell the American people whether a president can engage in an insurrection and then again run for office.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
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