The Supreme Court of the US state of Colorado has banned former President Donald Trump from being on the primary ballot in the state.
The State’s apex court ruled on Tuesday in a case brought by Democrat activists arguing that Trump was disqualified from running for the White House again because he had engaged in “insurrection” against the US government. The activists cited a section of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution which was passed following the Civil War in 1865.
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The court ruled 4-3 that Mr Trump was not an eligible candidate because he had engaged in an insurrection over the US Capitol riot nearly three years ago.
Four judges of the Colorado Supreme Court, all of whom are reported to be Democrats, agreed that Trump was not eligible to be on the primary ballots in the state. The Judges however, stayed their ruling until January 4, 2024, pending appeals.
It does not stop Mr Trump running in the other states and his campaign says it will appeal to the US Supreme Court.
The ruling only mentions the state’s primary election on 5 March, when Republican voters will choose their preferred candidate for president. But it could affect the general election in Colorado next November.
Donald Trump, who is vying to return to the White House for a second term in Office as President, and the present Republican front-runner has vowed to appeal the ruling.
The Colorado Republican Party also responded, saying it would withdraw from the state’s primary process if the ruling was allowed to stand.
In its reaction, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign called the decision “completely flawed” and a product of “a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.”
“Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls,” said Cheung. “They have lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to stop the American voters from throwing them out of office next November.”
The Trump campaign will appeal to the US Supreme Court and has “full confidence” that it will “quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits,” Cheung added.
Trump’s competitors for the GOP nomination rallied around him on Tuesday evening after the Court’s ruling.
The ruling came as Trump and three of his rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and multi-millionaire biotech entrepreneur and first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – campaigned in Iowa with just under four weeks to go until the state’s caucuses lead off the GOP presidential nominating calendar.
Florida Governor, DeSantis wrote on social media, “”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. SCOTUS should reverse.”
Nikki Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump’s presidency 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.”
Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to withdraw his name from the Colorado primary ballot and encouraged his opponents to do the same.
“This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado,” he charged. “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.”
Chris Christie, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2017 termed the Colorado ruling as “probably premature” because the former president has yet to be tried for inciting the attack on the Capitol.
“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being President of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being President of the United States by the voters of this country,” Christie emphasized.
Trump is the commanding front-runner for the Republican nomination with as much as a 50-point lead over all other contenders, as he runs for the presidency a third straight time.
The “insurrection” charges came from the January 6 protest which followed Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election – which saw the widespread use of mail-in ballots and resulted in Democrat Joe Biden getting the most votes ever in US history – was “rigged” and marred by irregularities.
Ever since then, Democrats have sought to disqualify the 45th president from running for office again. To that effect, multiple activist groups have filed legal challenges in several US states citing the “insurrection” clause of the 14th Amendment. It says that a person cannot run for elected office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US Constitution after taking an oath to support it, and was specifically created to prevent the defeated Confederates from returning to elected office after the 1861-65 conflict over secession and slavery.
Trump made history earlier this year as the first former or current president to be indicted for a crime, but his four indictments — including in federal court in Washington, D.C., and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss — have only fueled his support among Republican voters.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
