I’ll be frank here — I do not like Trump, think he is unfit for office, and have no desire to promote his candidacy for office. And I think the Colorado Supreme Court got their decision wrong. I also think I’m more worth listening to on this matter than the people who hate Trump and will stop at nothing to stop him. They will justify any decision and package it in any legal justification they can, even if wrong, and they’ll abide no opposition. They are as wrong as the people who insist only Trump can save the republic. Regardless of the side, we’re dealing with mirror-image people who behave exactly opposite each other, purely in reaction to each other.
The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Donald Trump from the ballot because they decided he led an insurrection on January 6, 2021. 🙄
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
14th Amendment, Section 3
Some good constitutional scholars are convinced that this provision is applicable. Some dolts on the Colorado Supreme Court do too. The problem is they all read the amendment through the originalism of January 6, 2021, and not the originalism of July 9, 1868, when the amendment was ratified.
The provision is clearly in reference to the Civil War; in that case, an insurrection involved an actual armed rebellion against the United States of America and territory purporting to secede from the nation with the backing of individuals — not storming into the United States Capitol without a shot being fired.
“Trump was never going to win Colorado anyway, so all Democrats have done in their “moral victory” is juice Trump’s fundraising and provide him and his supporters a grievance that the Democrats have engaged in lawfare.”
The people to whom the amendment applied had declared a side and took up arms for that side and secession.
Federal laws about insurrections are now on the books, and Donald Trump has not been convicted of an insurrection. Importantly, one cannot read the Fourteenth Amendment without considering 18 U.S.C. § 2383, which states, “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
The emphasized part reflects the Fourteenth Amendment and strongly suggests that without a guilty verdict in a federal court for violating 18 U.S.C. § 2383, a person cannot be disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment. Donald Trump has literally not been convicted of the crime of insurrection. Second, there is no statutory definition of what an insurrection is, making it like porn — judges know it when they see it, which is why a due process hearing explicitly against an individual matters so much here.
Third, note that Donald Trump will not technically be on the ballot in Colorado.1 Colorado’s voters vote for Electoral College members who, in turn, choose the President. Presuming the Colorado Republican Party does not nominate electors who participated in January 6, the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to them. It is a big leap for Colorado to say it can keep electors who did not participate in an insurrection off the ballot in order to keep Donald Trump from being voted on subsequently in the Electoral College, which is a separate election from what actually will happen on Election Day.
A state court using the Fourteenth Amendment language to disqualify a man for federal office without that man being subjected to a due process hearing on an underlying crime is a bad precedent. The officers of the United States who sided with the Confederacy had declared their loyalty to the Confederacy, taken up office in or arms on behalf of the Confederacy, and after the war, the Confederate States were not allowed to reobtain power, nor were those men, without ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and reintegrating themselves back into the United States.
None of that applies in this case.
Trump broke people’s brains. The Supreme Court will fix this. The Democrats have decided to, like Trump’s primary rivals, rely on external events to stop him instead of mounting credible arguments against him.
I do not think Trump is qualified to be President, but that is a decision for voters, not progressive judges in Colorado. If you can’t understand why progressive judges should not bar a man from the ballot without an explicit due process trial against him personally for alleged crimes and you think the whim of judges without such a trial is good, you are no better than those you hate — the people who thought the President could unilaterally single out and ban people of one religion from coming to the United States. The Supreme Court rejected that too.
Only-Trump and Anti-Trump contingents are mirror images of each other. They all insist they are principled while showing themselves to be outcome-oriented transactionalists, cheering on the outcomes they approve and rejecting those they hate, all while insisting no precedents are being set.
They are like Democrats scrapping the judicial filibuster, confident nothing bad will happen to them. Ruth Bader Ginsburg say what?
