>>20044436
>WATCH THE TRIAL!!!
>>20044474
>>20044662
>>20044689
>>20044775
Colorado Supreme Court Takes Up Trump’s Eligibility to Be President
A district court judge ruled last month that the 14th Amendment barred insurrectionists from every office except the nation’s highest. “How is that not absurd?” one justice asked of that notion.
The Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on the question of whether former President Donald J. Trump is barred from holding office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies people who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it.
Several of the seven justices appeared skeptical of arguments made by a lawyer for Mr. Trump, including the core one that a district court judge relied on in a ruling last month ordering Mr. Trump to be included on the Colorado primary ballot: that Section 3 did not apply to the presidency. The Colorado Supreme Court is hearing an appeal of that ruling as part of a lawsuit brought by Republican and independent voters in the state who, in seeking to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot, have contended the opposite.
“How is that not absurd?” Justice Richard L. Gabriel asked of the notion that the lawmakers who wrote Section 3 in the wake of the Civil War had intended to disqualify insurrectionists from every office except the nation’s highest.
Section 3 lists a number of positions an insurrectionist is disqualified from holding but not explicitly the presidency, so challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility rely on the argument that the presidency is included in the phrases “officer of the United States” and “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” It also does not specify who gets to decide whether someone is an insurrectionist: election officials and courts, as the petitioners argue, or Congress itself, as Mr. Trump’s team argues.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Scott Gessler, suggested on Wednesday that the lawmakers had trusted the Electoral College to prevent an insurrectionist from becoming president, and that they had known the Northern states held enough electoral power after the Civil War to prevent a Confederate leader from winning a national election anyway.
Justice Gabriel did not seem satisfied, and neither did colleagues who jumped in with follow-up questions. Justice Monica M. Márquez asked why lawmakers would have chosen the “indirect” route of blocking someone only through the Electoral College. And Justice Melissa Hart asked whether Mr. Gessler’s interpretation of Section 3 would have allowed Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy, to become president.
Mr. Gessler said yes: If Americans had elected Davis, and the Electoral College had not blocked him, that would have been “the rule of democracy.”
Mr. Gessler also argued that the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not an insurrection because an insurrection “has to be longer than three hours” and “broader than one building,” and that only Congress — not the Colorado secretary of state or the courts — could assess Mr. Trump’s eligibility under Section 3.
A judge in Michigan agreed last month with the argument that only Congress could make such a determination in dismissing a similar effort to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. Still, several of the Colorado justices expressed doubt.
Editors’ Picks
How Do the Pros Create Holiday Magic? (Yes, You Can Try This at Home.)
Penguins Take Thousands of Naps Every Day
Restaurant Review: After a Scandal, April Bloomfield Sets a New Course
“I don’t think anyone would say Congress needs to act to enforce the abolition of slavery,” Justice Gabriel said, adding that he was concerned that Mr. Gessler’s logic would mean the courts could not adjudicate due process or equal protection claims either. …
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/politics/trump-colorado-14th-amendment-ballot.html