The Colorado Supreme Court ruled to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, misconstruing a Civil War-era constitutional provision barring candidates who “engaged in insurrection” from elected office.
In a 4-3 decision on Tuesday, the far-left court, dominated by judges appointed by Democrat governors, voted to keep Colorado residents from casting ballots for the likely Republican presidential nominee. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Colorado case to date has focused on the Republican primary but the court’s ruling would apply with equal force to the general election.”
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the judges wrote.
The high court decision overturned a district court ruling that found Trump “incited” the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, but that the constitutional stipulation for those who engage in “insurrection” does not apply to the presidency. A similar effort to remove Trump from the Minnesota ballot on the same grounds failed in November.
“The Court holds there is scant direct evidence regarding whether the Presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification,” Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace wrote last month. “The Court holds that it is unpersuaded that the drafters intended to include the highest office in the Country in the catchall phrase ‘office … under the United States.'”
Trump’s campaign promptly pledged to appeal the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision.
“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. “We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits.”
While Trump is unlikely to carry the deep-blue western state, the Colorado court’s decision marks the latest episode in the Democrats’ 2024 lawfare campaign strategy of weaponizing the judicial system against their top political opponent. Trump faces 91 state and federal charges heading into next year’s election. Although corporate media have hyperventilated over a second Trump term being a “dictatorship,” President Joe Biden has more in common with a strongman like Russian leader Vladimir Putin than the Republican front-runner does.
“They are willing to violate the U.S. Constitution at levels never seen before in order to win this election,” Trump said Tuesday, labeling Biden “a threat to democracy.”
Even one of Trump’s 2024 rivals for the Republican nomination, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, blasted the Colorado ruling as “an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision.”
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors under Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) are aiming for a criminal conviction of the Republican front-runner related to the Jan. 6 riot months before voters head to the polls. The U.S. district court judge presiding over the case, Tanya Chutkan, is an Obama-appointed activist with a penchant for dealing harsh sentences to individuals caught up in the Jan. 6 demonstrations.
On Tuesday, Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway reported on the left-wing effort to “fast-track” the criminal process against Trump.
“District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has done everything in her power to speed up the process for one of the complicated cases Democrats have filed against former President Donald Trump,” Hemingway wrote. “Whereas the standard federal fraud and conspiracy case takes about two years to get to trial, controversial Special Counsel Jack Smith and Chutkan have worked in concert to get the trial started in March, a breathtaking seven months after Trump’s indictment.”
