Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been barred from running on the Republican primary ballot in the state of Colorado, in yet another attempt by Democrats to use legal methods to stop their biggest Republican rival from being re-elected as U.S. President.
In its ruling on Tuesday, December 19th, the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from serving as U.S. president and appearing on the primary ballot in Colorado because of his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Four judges voted in favour of barring Trump, three voted against. All of the judges were appointed by Democratic governors.
The ruling cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it. The ruling makes Trump the first presidential candidate deemed ineligible for the White House under the rarely used constitutional provision.
Leftist advocacy groups have sued to block Trump from the ballot in more than twelve states, but at least seven of them have failed for a variety of reasons. The Colorado ruling applies only to Colorado’s Republican primary on March 5th—where Trump and other Republicans running for president face off against each other—but it could affect Trump’s status in the state for the November 5th general election—which Trump is likely to contest against current Democrat President Joe Biden, in a rematch between the two following the 2020 elections.
Donald Trump is the favourite to win the Republican primaries, and latest polls suggest he would also beat Joe Biden by a 3% point margin. Trump is facing a myriad of legal battles, all initiated by Democratic prosecutors—lawsuits that have been called politically motivated by Republicans.
As Fox News points out, Trump has yet to formally be convicted of insurrection or any Confederacy-era statutes the Colorado ruling is alluding to. Trump’s rivals in the Republican primaries have defended the former president, and lambasted the Biden Administration for using undemocratic methods against Trump.
“The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted.
Former Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley told reporters that “we don’t need to have judges making these decisions. We need voters to make these decisions. So I want to see this in the hands of the voters. We’re going to win this the right way.”
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to withdraw his name from the Colorado primary ballot and encouraged his opponents to do the same. “Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again,” he tweeted.
Donald Trump’s lawyers will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees.
Although Trump lost in the state of Colorado by 13 percentage points to Biden in 2020 and would likely lose again next year according to polls, the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials could follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states, AP reports.
During a speech in Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump did not address the Colorado ruling, but said, “crooked Joe Biden and the far-Left lunatics are desperate to stop us by any means necessary.”
