A group of American citizens announced Tuesday that they had appealed to the Supreme Court of Colorado a decision of a court in this state rejecting their request for the ineligibility of Donald Trump but considering that the former president was guilty of “rebellion” in 2021.
A trial judge in Denver, capital of this western state, rejected the request to exclude Donald Trump from the ballots in the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential election, like his peers in Minnesota and the Michigan. But she concluded that he had “engaged in rebellion on January 6, 2021”, a first.
“Mr. Trump acted with the specific intent of inciting political violence and directing it toward the Capitol with the aim of preventing the certification of the election of his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, judge Sarah Wallace said. in its decision of more than 100 pages.
On the other hand, she considered that the 14e constitutional amendment, invoked by the petitioners, the anti-corruption citizens group Crew, did not apply to the president, although they acknowledged the existence of doubts on this point.
This amendment adopted in 1868, targeting at the time the supporters of the Southern Confederacy defeated during the Civil War (1861-1865), excludes from all public responsibility anyone, after having taken an oath to defend the Constitution, who would have engaged in acts of “rebellion”.
Crew announced in a press release that it had appealed this decision overnight from Monday to Tuesday before the Colorado Supreme Court.
The question asked in this appeal is whether the judge made an “error” in considering that the text “does not apply to presidents who engage in rebellion or to rebels who want to become president”.
Donald Trump’s campaign welcomed the decision, saying it represented “another nail in the coffin of anti-American ballot challenges,” but his lawyers have indicated to the Supreme Court their intention to appeal, Crew says.
The Colorado trial decision represents “a giant step toward excluding Trump from the ballots on constitutional grounds,” said columnist and law professor Harry Litman.
It “offers the petitioners what they needed most, a finding of fact that Trump engaged in rebellion,” he wrote in an op-ed published Monday by the Los Angeles Times.
The historic indictment of the ex-president on August 1 at the federal level then on August 14 by the state of Georgia (southeast) for his allegedly illicit attempts to obtain the reversal of the results of the 2020 election opened a legal debate on his possible ineligibility, leading to appeals in several states.
