Judge: Trump engaged in insurrection, but can stay on primary ballot
A Colorado judge ruled on Friday that former President Donald Trump could remain on the primary ballot in the state, rejecting the argument that the 14th Amendment prevents him from holding office again but doing so on relatively narrow grounds that lawyers for the voters seeking to disqualify him said they would appeal.
With his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Judge Sarah Wallace ruled, Trump engaged in insurrection against the Constitution, an offense that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which was ratified in 1868 to keep former Confederates out of the government deems disqualifying for people who previously took an oath to support the Constitution.
But Wallace, a state district court judge in Denver, concluded that Section 3 did not include the presidential oath in that category.
The clause does not explicitly name the presidency, so that question hinged on whether the president was included in the category “officer of the
United States.”
Because of “the absence of the president from the list of positions to which the amendment applies combined with the fact that Section 3 specifies that the disqualifying oath is one to `support' the Constitution whereas the presidential oath is to `preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution,” Wallace wrote, “it appears to the court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section 3 did not intend to include a person who had only taken the presidential oath.”
“Part of the court's decision,” she continued, “is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section 3.”
She added in a footnote that it was “not for this court to decide” whether the omission of the presidency was intentional or an oversight.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement: “We applaud today's ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.”