Donald Trump and the plaintiffs suing to keep him off the 2024 ballot are appealing on different grounds a Colorado court ruling widely considered a victory for Trump.
Judge Sarah Wallace, an appointee of Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, ruled Friday that while Trump did engage in insurrection on January 6, 2021, he was not an officer of the United States as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment, invalidating efforts to disqualify him from the Colorado primary ballot in a narrow victory for the former president.
Plaintiffs in that Colorado case, as in other similar cases across the nation, have used the obscure “Insurrection Clause” in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, a Civil War-era provision which bans those who have held certain positions in government who “engaged in insurrection” from holding federal office, to make the novel legal argument that Trump should be disqualified from appearing on the ballot.
Yet Trump has not been convicted, or even charged, of inciting insurrection and was acquitted by the U.S. Senate of charges of engaging in insurrection. He continues to deny wrongdoing.
In appealing the case to the state’s top court, the plaintiffs seek to overturn Wallace’s final decision and ensure Trump’s removal from the ballot. Trump’s team filed a cross-appeal, saying that Wallace’s court “made legal and factual findings wholly unsupported in the law, and these errors demand review – especially if the Petitioners in this matter also seek review of the sole dispositive issue upon which President Trump prevailed.”
Trump and his supporters argue that lawsuits seeking to deny Trump ballot access by exploiting the 1868 constitutional amendment are part of a litany of politicized civil and criminal lawsuits designed to weaponize the courts and hurt the president politically, a process they’ve coined “lawfare.”
Yet despite these efforts, Trump has maintained an overwhelming lead in the Republican primary, and has steadily climbed in general election polling, leading Biden in a handful of recent polls.
“The Democrats have been running lawfare and election interference against President Trump since he came down the golden escalator before the 2016 presidential election,” said Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, a conservative organization created to defend constitutionalist judges and the rule of law that has been a major player in defending Trump in the public square. “They spied on his presidential campaign. They spied on him as President of the United States. They falsely accused him of Russian collusion. They impeached him twice for nonsense. They indicted him four times for non-crimes. They’re trying to bankrupt his business through a bogus civil fraud lawsuit. They’ve gagged him illegally twice.
“This is all backfiring. It’s actually propelling President Trump back into the White House.“
Despite plaintiffs choosing to file cases in jurisdictions across the country viewed as amenable to their arguments, Trump has received favorable outcomes in Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Michigan, although one or more of those decisions could end up before the Supreme Court on appeal.
Davis called these lawsuits a “legal Hail Mary of just trying to disqualify President Trump from key state ballots so President Biden wins by default.”
He believes the Colorado decision “is a tactical retreat by Democrats” in a battle that is far from over.
“They’re going to do everything they can to chase President Trump off the ballot. They’ve proven that. They felt the political heat so they’re in tactical retreat, but they’ll be back.”
The Colorado case was brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog nonprofit group tied to Democrat strategist David Brock that has received criticism for its “partisan vendetta against conservatives and Republicans.”
Brock’s network of organizations includes Media Matters for America (MMfA), which has come under scrutiny in recent days after Elon Musk’s X/Twitter filed a lawsuit over its efforts to link ad placements on the platform to neo-Nazi content. The far-left nonprofit has used the strategy in the past to trigger ad boycotts against conservative media companies.
MMfA achieved notoriety for continuing to defend actor Jussie Smollett’s 2019 claims of falling victim to a hate crime after evidence appeared undermining his story, labelling the skepticism of Smollett’s story a “right wing smear” and only updating its website after Smollett was arrested for filing a false police report.
Wallace previously denied a motion by Trump’s team that she step aside due to her past donation to a liberal group working to keep Trump off the ballot — the very thing her ruling Friday accomplished — and denied a motion by Trump and the Colorado GOP to throw the case out.
Colorado’s primary election will be held March 5, 2024. Ballots must be certified by January 5, leaving little time for the courts to resolve this matter.
The case is Anderson v. Griswold, No. 2023CV32577, in district court for the city and county of Denver.
Follow Bradley Jaye on Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.