Colo. trial to see if Trump eligible to be president
Lawsuit alleges he participated in insurrection
Something the nation has never seen before began playing out in a Denver courtroom Monday morning: A trial to determine whether a major party’s likely presidential nominee is eligible to be president at all.
The lawsuit, filed in September by six Colorado voters with the help of a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues that former president Donald Trump is ineligible to hold office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That section disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.
The plaintiffs say Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — namely his actions before and while his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory — meet the disqualification criteria.
Sarah B. Wallace, the state district court judge presiding over the case, rejected multiple requests from Trump and from the Colorado Republican State Central Committee in recent weeks to dismiss the case without a trial. Wallace also rejected a call for her to recuse herself because she had donated to an organization that opposes Republican candidates in Colorado — a donation that Trump’s presidential campaign was fervently highlighting. She said she had not formed any opinion on the legal issues in the case.
In an opening statement
Monday, Eric Olson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said his team would argue that Jan. 6 was “an insurrection against the Constitution” and that Trump engaged in that insurrection.
Olson ran through the familiar account of Trump’s speech to his supporters on the morning of Jan. 6 and the storming of the Capitol that followed. He reminded the court that Trump did not call off the mob for hours. “We are here because Trump claims, after all that, he has the right to be president again,” he said. “But our Constitution, our shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so.”
A lawyer for Trump, Scott Gessler, said his team would argue that “engaging” in an insurrection required more than “mere incitement through words.” He said Trump had never called for violence and had urged his supporters to act “peacefully and patriotically” — words that had been noted preemptively by Olson. Olson said that using the phrase once did not outweigh the balance of a speech that repeatedly called on people to “fight.”
On Trump’s side, Gessler argued it would be “antidemocratic” to deny him the ability to run and unprecedented for a court to deem a presidential candidate ineligible under the 14th Amendment.
Wallace has laid out nine topics to be addressed at the trial, which is scheduled to last all week. They include whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to presidents; what “engaged” and “insurrection” mean under that section; whether Trump’s actions fit those definitions; and whether the amendment is “self-executing” — in other words, whether it can be applied without specific action by Congress identifying whom to apply it to.