Trump Backers Warn Supreme Court That Letting States Disqualify Candidates Is a 'Recipe for Electoral Chaos' – The Messenger
Former President Donald Trump's political allies urged the Supreme Court on Thursday not to allow states to decide who runs for federal office.
In December, the Colorado Supreme Court struck Trump from the ballot after finding that he "engaged in" insurrection in a manner prohibited by the 14th Amendment's disqualification cause. The Maine Secretary of State subsequently followed suit under the same provision.
Trump's former longtime personal attorney Jay Sekulow, now representing the Colorado Republican State Central Committee in a fight to restore the former president to the ballot, argues that the amendment was intended to "limit" state power, making the rulings an "upside down" execution of constitutional authority.
"A self-executing Section Three, moreover, empowers each of the 50 states to decide for themselves who is disqualified, a recipe for electoral chaos perfectly illustrated by this case and by Maine’s recent decision to disqualify President Trump," the 19-page brief states.
The fight to oust Trump from the ballot in Colorado was spearheaded by four Republican voters, led by Norma Anderson, and two unaffiliated voters, who are represented by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
In the litigation, Trump and his legal adversaries agree on little, except that the Supreme Court should hear the controversy.
"This case is of utmost national importance," Anderson's lawyers wrote in their reply to the petition, which Trump's allies quoted as grounds for agreement. "And given the upcoming presidential primary schedule, there is no time to wait for the issues to percolate further."
Trump's allies, however, sought to steer discussion away from what they characterized as the "distorted and inflammatory factual discussion" of whether the former president engaged in insurrection by inspiring a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, impeached Trump a second time on a single article of inciting an insurrection, and the then-GOP controlled Senate acquitted Trump at a trial.
Though Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four felony offenses in an election-obstruction case, none of those charges was the insurrection statute, a fact that Trump's allies seized upon in the Supreme Court.
No Colorado judge has disputed that Trump "engaged in" insurrection under the orbit of the 14th Amendment, finding a criminal conviction for that crime was not necessary. The trial judge and dissenting justices who found in Trump's favor based their decision on other grounds, which Trump's backers leaned on more heavily in their filing.
In one passage, Sekulow argues that the drafters of the 14th Amendment — ratified in the wake of the Civil War and containing clauses to prevent oath-breaking Confederates from returning to public life — specifically excluded the president of the United States from their definition of an "officer."
Those who support finding Trump ineligible to run again for public office often analogize the 14th Amendment to restrictions on the U.S. presidency to natural-born citizens, but Sekulow argues that the comparison isn't apt.
"'Insurrection' is inherently different," he argues in the brief. "It is a politicized determination without standards or congressional authorization that will fluctuate wildly depending on politics."
The 14th Amendment allows Congress to remove disqualification by a supermajority vote, and Trump's challengers argue that this language shows the amendment is self-executing. But the Colorado Republican party argues that the reasoning "does not follow."
"That Congress has authority to remove the effect of something is irrelevant to whether it has authority to apply it," their brief states.
CREW did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both parties' agreement that the Supreme Court should hear the case ratchets up the stakes. Affirming the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling could knock Trump off the ballot nationwide, and overruling it could negate similar challenges and rulings across the country.