Thank you for posting the full decision. I love checking the primary sources. Relevant points from the summary:
• The Election Code allows the Electors to challenge President Trump’s status as a qualified candidate based on Section Three. Indeed, the Election Code provides the Electors their only viable means of litigating whether President Trump is disqualified from holding office under Section Three.
• Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.
• Judicial review of President Trump’s eligibility for office under Section Three is not precluded by the political question doctrine.
• Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency and someone who has taken an oath as President. On this point, the district court committed reversible error.
• The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting portions of Congress’s January 6 Report into evidence at trial.
• The district court did not err in concluding that the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection.”
• The district court did not err in concluding that President Trump “engaged in” that insurrection through his personal actions.
• President Trump’s speech inciting the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not protected by the First Amendment.
As I’m reading this further, I have to say, this ruling is full of so much spiciness that I’m surprised the media hasn’t reported on it more. A few of my favorites so far (emphasis mine):
• If the Presidency is not an “office . . . under the United States,” then anyone impeached—including a President—could nonetheless go on to serve as President. This reading is nonsensical
• When interpreting the Constitution, we prefer a phrase’s normal and ordinary usage over “secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.”
• While nothing in Representative McKee’s speeches mentions why his express reference to the Presidency was removed [from the final draft of the 14th Amendment], his public pronouncements leave no doubt that his subsequent draft proposal still sought to ensure that rebels had absolutely no access to political power. Representative McKee explained that, under the proposed amendment, “the loyal alone shall rule the country” and that traitors would be “cut[] off . . . from all political power in the nation.”
• Representative McKee desired to exclude all oath-breaking insurrectionists from all federal offices, including the Presidency
They even went so far as to reference the fucking dictionary for those saying Trump never took an oath to support the Constitution.
• The language of the presidential oath—a commitment to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”—is consistent with the plain meaning of the word “support.” U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 8. Modern dictionaries define “support” to include “defend” and vice versa. See, e.g., Support, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/support
My tinfoil hat theory is that the district judge did not want to be responsible for keeping trump off the ballot, be it safety for her/her family, or that it is such a momentous event that she did not feel comfortable bearing that weight alone. So she came up with this “not specifically references” conclusion as a soft punt to the state supreme court.
Makes sense. Had it been just her that ruled against him, Trump would’ve cast her as an activist Biden puppet. But now that the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against him instead, it’s harder to paint that picture.
Still, I don’t like the idea of judges being intimidated to rule in a way they know to be incorrect just so an appeals court can take the blame.
They do go on to quote the dictionary again (both from the 1800s and the current version) to define what an “insurrection” is, then say:
We have little difficulty concluding that substantial evidence in the record supported each of these elements and that, as the district court found, the events of January 6 constituted an insurrection.
Also, love how they basically reference what we all saw live here:
Moreover, contrary to President Trump’s assertion that no evidence in the record showed that the mob was armed with deadly weapons or that it attacked law enforcement officers in a manner consistent with a violent insurrection, the district court found—and millions of people saw on live television, recordings of which were introduced into evidence in this case—that the mob was armed with a wide array of weapons.
God damn. Some more spice in a quote about whether or not Trump “engaged in” insurrection since he wasn’t actually in the mob:
[I]t is not necessary to prove that the individual accused, was a direct, personal actor in the violence. If he was present, directing, aiding, abetting, counselling, or countenancing it, he is in law guilty of the forcible act. Nor is even his personal presence indispensable. Though he be absent at the time of its actual perpetration, yet if he directed the act, devised or knowingly furnished the means, for carrying it into effect, instigating others to perform it, he shares their guilt. In treason there are no accessories.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
DENVER (AP) — The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, 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, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
After a weeklong hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump indeed had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and her ruling that kept him on the ballot was a fairly technical one.
“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,” attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court in early December.
The original article contains 639 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Great idea, ban the frontrunner of the only other viable Party from running for office, this won’t have any consequences at all!
Maybe he shouldn’t have attempted a coup? Consequences indeed.
You think election denialism was bad before? Just wait until it’s literally illegal for Trump to get elected lol
The nation is only as strong as we’re willing to fight corruption and enforce laws.
If Trump faces no consequences it will be easier for the next dictator wannabe to seize control.
Pissing off maga morons is a small price to pay.
Trump should have faced consequences years ago. They waited too long and now he’s running for president again.
The legal system moves slowly and this is rather unprecedented so there is a lot of room for debate.
Your don’t just skip all that. It’s important that the legal system work this out so Trump Jr. (figuratively and possibly literally) faces clear consequences in the future.
The best time to punish him was on Jan 6, the second best time is now.
Great idea, don’t hold former presidents to account when they attempt to subvert democracy, that won’t have any consequences at all!
If they wanted to hold him to account they’d have charged him immediately after the insurrection, rather than waiting for the next election. Why did they wait so long? Now he’s campaigning and can use every decision against him to rally his supporters into a frothing mob.
You mean like the impeachment or any of the trials we’ve had for his criminal behavior? Yeah, why didn’t they do that immediately??? And while we’re at it, why does the legal system move so slowly???
The impeachment was literally nothing.
What I mean is that he could have been arraigned much earlier. They slow walked the charges so that he’d have time to become the frontrunner in order to sabotage the GOP. This isn’t just the law moving slowly, this is a political strategy to ensure Biden’s reelection.
This will only result in his cult becoming radicalized.
Hopefully they don’t get violent.
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Federal courts just move slowly. Any of the current cases against Trump taking less than 6 years would be an anomaly. That’s not an endorsement of our current system of justice, far from it.
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Trump notoriously uses delay as his primary legal tactic; Has done for decades.
His lawyers have taken every opportunity to take legal actions doomed to “fail” because they knew they would gum up the works and move trial dates further back. They have argued at every turn for delays, and are currently complaining about being told to work over the holidays because a judge gave them strict deadlines for filing briefs in Trump’s own appeal which has paused all actions in the case until it is resolved.
(The appeal is that Trump has “absolute immunity” and therefore can’t even be tried, let alone convicted, for any crimes he may have committed while president. It’s absurd on its face)
Federal courts just move slowly.
The J-6th rioters got court hearings and sentences before Trump was even brought up on charges. That’s telling.
Now it’s too late and he’s the frontrunner. By taking so long they might destabilize the country.
The prosecuted J-6th rioters actually entered the capital building, committed crimes with their own hands on camera, or spent months prior to the insurrection explicitly (in writing) organizing people to do things like kidnap Nancy Peloci and kill Mike Pence.
Those are easier cases to make, and those defendants filling court records with defenses of “I was just following the orders of my president” help build a case against Trump himself.
The “Imminent lawless action” standard in first amendment jurisprudence is a harder one to meet than most people realize. There’s reasonable precedent to say that enough time passes between Trump inciting his croud to insurrection and them actually doing it that it doesn’t meet the “imminent” standard. It’s not in any way an easy case to make and win.
There are many federal and state cases against Trump right now, and to say that they’ve been intentionally slow-walked to cooencide with the election is to ignore the years of litigation that have already happened in most of them.
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As a foreigner I am surprised it took this long. Will likely not lessen the support for Trump, but nearly nothing will at this point.
As a foreigner who’s spent a lot of time in America, this may actually be good for Trump. I am not 100% sure how elections work in the US, but at most this will keep his name off a ballot Trump would never win and at best it will ensure his name has to be on every ballot. Assuming the SCOTUS overturns it, it sets a precedent that the POTUS is not an officer and therefore isn’t included in any legal language that concerns officers. Which opens up expansion of the powers of the executive. Still assuming that the SCOTUS overturns it it could play right into the Project 2025 playbook.
The ballot disqualification part is cool and all, but isn’t the bigger deal a legal ruling saying yes it was obviously an insurrection and yes he obviously incited it?
This decision was about whether the whole “not being allowed on the ballot if you incite an insurrection” thing was intended to apply to the president, or just everyone else. That’s a weird discussion to have after deciding a leading presidential contender obviously tried a coup. I’d really prefer we focus back on the coup part, and maybe less on the intentions of 150+ y/o lawmakers.
150+ year old documents written by law makers is how this country works. We can focus on both.
Sure but the intentions of people long dead doesn’t need to come into it, is my point. We can apply the law as it makes sense in the context of the present.
One of the tenets of our legal system is that our laws are applied evenly so that people understand what is legal or not.
If the interpretation of a law changes with time then you could find yourself a foul of the law when previously you weren’t. It’s why “precedent” matters.
Absent precedent we need to understand what the law makers meant with the words they used. Especially for old laws since language changes over time.
This is an important step and how the system works. We cannot and should not skip it.
Given that Colorado isn’t a swing state, does this actually matter in practical terms?