LOS ANGELES.–Supreme Court looks ready to rule tomorrow on whether the Colorado Supreme Court can remove 77-year-old former President Donald Trump for the 2024 federal election ballot. When the Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the ballot Dec. 19, 2023, the appeared to jump the gun, especially on pending legal cases against Trump. Special Counsel Jack Smith is in a holding pattern waiting to try Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s D.C. District Court but only after the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s immunity claims. Tomorrow’s expected Supreme Court ruling could roil the Democrat Party establishment and left-leaning U.S. news industry if the Supreme Court rules that it’s premature to remove Trump from a ballot when his election interference case hasn’t gone to trial. Colorado’s Supreme Court said Trump was disqualified for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
Trump was accused by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, largely of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of planning and orchestrating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Once Trump was acquitted in the U.S. Senate Feb. 13, 2021 of “incitement of insurrection,” the Committee transmitted its 18-month investigation to Special Counsel Jack Smith. Cheney and Kinzinger concluded that Trump participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, even though branding it an insurrection was purely arbitrary to apply Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, prohibiting anyone participating in insurrection from holding government office. When Pelosi impeached Trump in 2020 for “incitement of insurrection,” she had Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in mind, even though the House Committee never proved Trump was involved.
Whatever happened on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump didn’t participate in the planning or orchestration of the riots that tried to prevent the Electoral College from certifying the 2020 election in favor of 81-year-old President Joe Biden. How the Colorado Supreme Court decided before Smith goes to trial against Trump that he should be disqualified from the ballot is anyone’s guess. Certainly the Colorado Supreme Court didn’t follow the law, something the U.S. Supreme Court should clarify tomorrow. Voters should look at how Democrats and the fake news all accept facts not in evidence to damage Trump’s 2024 election campaign. Trump actually appears on the Colorado ballot Super Tuesday, March 5, because the Colorado Supreme Court operates under a stay pending U.S. Supreme Court review. Well, tomorrow the Supreme Court rules.
Several states, including Maine and Illinois, seek to follow Colorado to disqualify Trump from their state’s ballots, also acting prematurely because no U.S. court has convicted Trump of interfering in the Electoral College vote certification. When the Supreme Court held oral arguments Feb. 8, the justices all seemed skeptical of the Colorado Supreme Court’s arguments, assuming facts not in evidence that Trump participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Supreme Court isn’t likely to weigh in on whether what happened on Jan. 6 was, in fact, an insurrection. Jan. 6 rioters were not armed with guns only cell phones, recording their vandalism for law enforcement to see before convicting them in court. Insurrection has a different meaning today than it did in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. Back then the government was concerned about Southern secessionists.
Whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to Trump or not, there no credible evidence that Trump participated in the Jan. 6 riots. Smith doesn’t have a factual basis for charging Trump with interfering with the Jan. 6, 2021 Electoral College vote certifications. Supreme Court Justices don’t have to determine whether or not the events of Jan. 6 qualify as an insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Al they need to know is that Trump has not been convicted in any court of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots. After tomorrow’s ruling. the Colorado Supreme Court could be embarrassed for not having the necessary facts needed to claim Trump participated in insurrection. Determining what constitutes insurrection is bad enough but not knowing whether Trump participated in insurrection should embarrass all Coloarado Supreme Court justices that wrote the majority opinion.
Except the most partisan Democrats and legal pundits in the press, few believe the Supreme Court will agree with the Colorado High Court. Most legal analysts think the Supreme Court will rule that there’s no legal basis to disqualify Trump on any federal ballot. If the court rules that Colorado has no basis to disqualify Trump from the ballot, Maine and Illinois are expected to go along. Denying Trump his Constitutional rights must follow from a criminal conviction not conjecture about whether or not Trump broke the law on Jan. 6, 2021. Everything points toward the Supreme Court ruling that Trump must go through the federal district court system before anyone deems him culpable on Jan. 6. Whether justices rule on whether the events of Jan. 6, 2021 qualify as an insurrection is anyone’s guess. But the Supreme Court will likely rule on whether Trump can be disqualified from the ballot.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
