Tag Archives: ColoradoSupremeCourt

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Daily Broadside | Pile On! Illinois Joins the States Trying to Kick Trump Off the Ballot

Anti-Trump Coloradoans have appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the GOP’s presidential primary ballot, pending review of SCOTUS.

Colorado voters seeking to remove former President Trump from their state’s GOP primary ballot responded Thursday to the former president’s appeal, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to disqualify him from appearing on the ballot for another term.

“The Court should decline Trump’s invitation to second-guess the Colorado Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Colorado Election Code,” the court filing said.

Trump isn’t second-guessing their interpretation of the election code; he’s challenging their conclusion that he led an insurrection and therefore could be removed from the ballot.

On Wednesday, Trump asked the justices to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to disqualify him from the Republican primary ballot for engaging in an insurrection.

In our country, a person is innocent until proven guilty unless they’re a bitter clinger MAGA Republican deplorable. Then a group of judges can determine innocence or guilt based not on a trial with evidence and witnesses before a jury of peers, but on whatever they claim an “insurrection” is.

Of course, the Colorado Supreme Court’s fevered decision is catching on in other states. It’s like the Chinese Lung Pox, but it’s a virus of the mind rather than the body.

Amid ongoing legal battles over his removal from the Republican primary ballots in Maine and Colorado, former President Donald Trump faces a new challenge to his eligibility for high office, this time in Illinois.

A group [sic] five Illinois voters, represented by Free Speech for People, has filed a challenge to Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment, contending that his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot constituted “insurrection” and disqualified him from the presidency, The Hill reported.

“Trump gave aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution by, among other things: encouraging and counseling the insurrectionists; deliberately failing to exercise his authority and responsibility as President to quell the insurrection; praising the insurrectionists, including calling them ‘very special,’ ‘good persons,’ and ‘patriots’; and promising or suggesting that he would pardon many of the insurrectionists if reelected to the presidency,” the filing claimed.

These kind of hysterical denunciations are the Left’s specialty—long on impressive sounding accusations, short on actual evidence. To wit, not one of the 1,069 J6 political prisoners in the Garland Archipelago has been charged with the crime of sedition or insurrection.

Not one.

But here we have five—count them, FIVE—Illinois voters who have, again, decided without evidence or a trial or a jury, that Trump is an insurrectionist and is disqualified from the presidency. (The five objectors are all men. Where is the diversity I was promised?!)

Again, the irony here is that they represent “Free Speech for People” which, judging by it’s grotesquely colored website that promotes abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a national popular vote, is a progressive non-profit that wants to “restore our democracy.” (Funny—when I think of “restoring” something, I think of taking it back to how it originally was, not breaking it from it’s foundational design. But I’m sure that’s just me.)

In their Petition, the Objectors rely on the decisions of Colorado and of Maine, both of which determined that Trump engaged in insurrection. But they also cite “multiple judges and government officials” who claim that January 6 was an insurrection (p. 60).

Again, just because “multiple judges and government officials” have claimed it was an insurrection doesn’t make it one. Frankly, the fact that “multiple judges and government officials” have claimed it was an insurrection makes me all the more suspicious that it was the farthest thing from an insurrection.

I’m not claiming that there was no violence or that things didn’t get broken. But I am claiming that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Trump engaged in an insurrection, except as claimed by people who defined what happened as “an insurrection.” It was a march on the Capitol that got out of hand and, as we’ve come to learn, was facilitated by the Capitol Police and, most likely, by the FBI.

If it had truly been an insurrection, there would have been an organized assault with guns and a lot of people would’ve died on both sides. Not one of the protestors has been charged with having a firearm on them. As it stands, the only people to die were protestors who were shot or beaten to death by the Capitol Police. It was a Reichstag moment, and the progressives have milked it for all it’s worth.

But the smart people who rule us have all decided that Trump is guilty of “engaging in” an insurrection. He’s the only one. Must’ve been quite a feat, Trump pulling that off all by himself.

The activist judges in Colorado got the ball rolling and now the rest of the states are piling on. Our country is beginning to turn yellow, like a banana republic.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | The Insurrection Isn’t Coming from the Right. It’s Coming From the Left

Lots of reactions to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling from Tuesday, with Leftists, NeverTrumpers, anti-Americans, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself five-fold) predictably gleeful with the decision, and conservatives, Trump supporters and other patriots condemning the decision as unAmerican and “election interference.”

I don’t know how you can look at it any other way than a partisan effort to disrupt our election process. (This is contra what yesterday I wrote that, “All seven of the Colorado Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, so one can’t plausibly argue that it was a partisan decision.” I read something that I can’t find saying that the majority justices all attended an Ivy League law school [like Harvard or Yale] and the three dissenting votes attended non-Ivy League schools. So I stand corrected).

Trump has never been accused of, tried for, or convicted of being engaged in “insurrection.” There is no way that the Colorado Supreme Court has standing to 1) find that Trump engaged in insurrection and therefore, 2) to disqualify him from the ballot based on that finding.

They’re interpreting an amendment that was written to keep Confederate soldiers and leaders who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, but had then literally engaged in insurrection to the point of raising armies and killing other Americans, as applying to Trump.

All Trump did was encourage his followers to “fight” for what they believed in, and that is now “insurrection.” The Colorado Supreme Court stretched that word so far that if it had been Elastigirl, she would’ve dislocated her shoulder.

On closer inspection, the ruling undermines itself, leaving us to wonder what it’s all about.

The majority on Tuesday said every key legal issue came out against Mr. Trump.

“The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion, saying that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results amounted to engaging in an insurrection and that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, bars insurrectionists from federal office, including the presidency.

They’re unequivocal in stating their conclusion. Trump is disqualfied from holding office and therefore listing him on the Colorado primary ballots would be “a wrongful act” under the Colorado Election Code. One has to wonder how a State usurps federal prerogative to decide if a person engaged in “insurrection” or usurps the candidate’s State’s rights to make that determination.

Or if there is even a way to make that determination apart from a formal charge, trial and conviction.

But this is the interesting part of the Colorado court’s ruling: they issued a stay until January 4th.

The majority added: “We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

But the court gave Mr. Trump a provisional escape route. It put its ruling on hold through Jan. 4, and if he seeks review in the U.S. Supreme Court, as he said he will, the state court said his name would remain on the primary ballot.

What they don’t say is that in the ruling, which you can read here, it says,

Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, until the receipt of any order or mandate from the Supreme Court.

In other words, because they knew Trump will immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, their “stay” will be in force indefinitely. Trump’s name will appear on the ballot no matter what.

So why are they doing this?

I think it’s because being the Leftists they are, they are piling on Trump. They’re part and parcel of the real “insurrection” that is taking place across the United States, with our political, educational, medical, judicial and journalistic institutions all subverting our traditional, historical and legal processes. If they can provoke a reaction from the Right, that would be a bonus. If they can set precedent for the Left in other states, that would be a win for them, too.

And, right on schedule:

In a letter dated Wednesday, California lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis (D.) urged California secretary of state Shirley Weber (D.) to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot,” given the Colorado supreme court’s decision. On Tuesday, the court voted 4–3 to disqualify Trump from appearing on the Centennial State’s ballot because he allegedly incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

“This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy,” Kounalakis wrote to Weber.

“California must stand on the right side of history,” Kounalakis added. “California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in [Anderson v. Griswold]. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.”

This isn’t about doing the right thing or being “on the right side of history” (what, exactly, does that mean anyway?). This is about finding semi-judicial means by which to eliminate Trump as a candidate. They start with the premise that Trump must be stopped; then they look for any “legal” means by which they can get that outcome.

Sen. Mike Lee put it this way:

“Lawless thuggery masquerading as jurisprudence.” Exactly.

You get the idea. And if what these Congressman and Senators say is true—that what the four horsemen of the Colorado Supreme Court did was “lawless thuggery”—then the next step is to impeach the four of them and remove them from the court.

Which will never happen of course. Because they’re Democrats.