Donald Trump Colorado ballot battle wages on with new appeal

Denver, Colorado - A group of voters seeking to block Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot in the 2024 presidential election announced Tuesday they are challenging a ruling that he can run despite having engaged in insurrection.

Plaintiffs in a Colorado lawsuit that seeks to remove Donald Trump from the state's ballots are appealing a court's decision to allow him to stay on.
Plaintiffs in a Colorado lawsuit that seeks to remove Donald Trump from the state's ballots are appealing a court's decision to allow him to stay on.  © WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

A court in Denver ruled on Friday that Trump's incitement of violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, did indeed amount to insurrection, but argued that a provision in the 14th amendment that prohibits someone from holding "any office... under the United States" if they engaged in insurrection does not apply to the presidency.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed the lawsuit to bar him from the state's ballots, said it had asked the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn that part of the decision.

"We are planning to build on the trial judge's incredibly important ruling that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection, and we are ready to take this case as far as necessary to ensure that Donald Trump is removed from the ballot," the group's president Noah Bookbinder said.

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Trump, who is the front-runner in the Republican primaries, has made the deadly Capitol riots and his false voter fraud claims that led to it the centerpiece of his campaign as he seeks re-election. Trump's historic indictments for allegedly leading a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 election - one at the federal level and another in Georgia - have opened a legal debate over his eligibility for future office.

If Donald Trump engaged in insurrection, how is he still allowed on the ballot?

In the ruling, Judge Sarah Wallace said, "The court concludes that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification," but argued the amendment clause cannot apply to Trump because it leaves the presidency out of its list of federal elected positions.

Wallace ruled that Trump was not an "officer of the United States" in any case, as the Constitution distinguishes the presidency from federal officers.

The Colorado action is one of multiple 14th Amendment lawsuits against Trump proceeding across the country. Minnesota's top court threw out a similar move earlier this month.

The Trump campaign hailed the decision to allow Trump to run in Colorado as "another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges," but has also appealed to have the insurrection finding overturned.

Cover photo: WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

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