The adventures of former President Donald Trump continued on Tuesday evening when the Supreme Court of the state of Colorado ruled by 4 to 3 that Trump is disqualified for ever running again for public office due to his alleged part in the alleged “insurrection” of January 6, 2021.
In its ruling the court states that: “A majority of the court hold that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Section 3 disqualifies anyone who has previously taken an oath but who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
More immediately and of consequence to Trump’s campaign to secure the nomination of the Republican Party in order that he might contest the Presidential next year is the Court ruling that “it would be a wrongful act under the electoral Code for the Colorado secretary of state to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
That primary is due to be held on March 5, 2024, so it is vital for the Trump campaign that the ruling is challenged and overturned prior to that – and before the Colorado judgement begins a potential wave of similar court decisions.
An appeal was announced by Trump straightaway in response but that cannot be heard by the United States Supreme Court before January 4 next as the Colorado Supreme Court has placed a hold on the ruling until that date.
The political reaction has been pretty predictable. Among those to condemn the decision was former Mayor of New York Rudi Giuliani who has had his own legal troubles of late, but also potential wild card candidate from the disgruntled Democrat side, Robert Kennedy Junior. Rival Republican candidates Ron De Santis and Nikki Haley also criticised the decision as an abuse of judicial powers.
One candidate for the Republican nomination, Vivek Ramaswamy, said he pledged to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and demanded that other candidates do the same immediately or be seen to be endorsing an “illegal maneuver”.
I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous… pic.twitter.com/qbpNf9L3ln
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 20, 2023
Whether the Colorado Supreme Court has in fact abused its powers is the question that will be posed to the United States Supreme Court. While the Court currently has a 6 – 3 conservative majority, it is impossible to predict what decision it might take or on what grounds – especially given that conservative justices and indeed the individual members of the current court have tended to uphold the rights of states, as for example where states have introduced bans on abortion. The dissenters believe that the Court has overstepped its mark.
Steven Cheung of the Trump campaign pulled no punches regarding the political aspects and indeed origins of the ruling. He claimed that the Democrat Party is in a “state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls.” He further accused the Court of “supporting a Soros-funded left wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.”
The NGO in question, and the one that took the case on the part of some Colorado voters, is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The NGO has been greatly preoccupied with Trump and filed its first suit against him just three days after his inauguration in January 2017. Its founder Norm Eisen is a close friend of Obama who he went to law school with and by whom he was appointed Ambassador to the Czech Republic in 2011.
CREW had an income of almost $8 million in 2021 and although it does not publish a list of its donors, it has indeed received funding from the Soros Open Society foundation as well as from the Barbara Streisand foundation. It clearly has close ties with the Democratic Party elite and it would be naïve to overlook this motivation in what they are attempting to do.
Whatever one thinks of Donald J; Trump there has been no evidence that he wilfully orchestrated an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, or indeed that whatever happened that day constituted such an event in the real meaning of what an insurrection might look like. All of this adds new frisson to what is already promising to be possibly the most dramatic American Presidential campaign of all in 2024.