A group of American citizens announced on Tuesday that they have appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court against a decision by a court in that state that rejected their request that Donald Trump not be elected, but the former president was accused of “rebellion” in 2015 was guilty in 2021.
• Also read: The appeals court rules on free speech in the 2020 Trump election trial
• Also read: Colorado court rejects request to bar Trump from voting
A judge in Denver, the capital of this western state, rejected a request to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election, like his counterparts in Minnesota and Michigan. However, she concluded that he had “started a rebellion on January 6, 2021,” a first.
“Mr. Trump acted with the specific intent of inciting political violence and directing it against the Capitol in order to prevent the confirmation of the election of his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, said Judge Sarah Wallace in her more than 100-page ruling.
On the other hand, it held that the 14th Amendment, invoked by the plaintiffs, the anti-corruption citizens group Crew, did not apply to the president, but acknowledged that there were doubts on that point.
This amendment, passed in 1868 and then aimed at supporters of the Southern Confederacy defeated in the Civil War (1861-1865), excludes from all public responsibility anyone who took an oath to defend the Constitution and participated in acts of “rebellion.”
Crew announced in a press release that it appealed that decision to the Colorado Supreme Court overnight Monday into Tuesday.
At issue in this appeal is whether the judge made an “error” in holding that the text “does not apply to presidents who rebel or to rebels who seek to become president.”
Donald Trump’s campaign welcomed the decision, saying it represented “another nail in the coffin of anti-American election challenges,” but his lawyers have told the Supreme Court they intend to appeal, Crew says.
The decision in the Colorado lawsuit represents “a major step toward barring Trump from the vote on constitutional grounds,” said columnist and law professor Harry Litman.
It “gives petitioners what they needed most, a finding of fact that Trump participated in the insurrection,” he wrote in an editorial published Monday by the Los Angeles Times.
The historic indictment of the ex-president on August 1 at the federal level and then on August 14 by the state of Georgia (Southeast) for his allegedly unlawful attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election opened a legal debate about his Possibility of ineligibility, which led to appeals in several states.