A court in Denver, Colorado, on Friday rejected a request to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election in that western American state.
The historic indictment of the former president (at the federal level on August 1, then by the state of Georgia on August 14) over his allegedly illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election sparked a legal debate over his possible ineligibility and led to appeals in several states.
In her ruling, Judge Sarah Wallace ordered Colorado election officials to “place Donald J. Trump on the ballot in the 2024 Republican primary.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign welcomed the decision, saying it was “another nail in the coffin of anti-American voting challenges.”
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
The plaintiffs, an anti-corruption citizens’ group called the Crew, accused the former president of inciting “a violent mob” of hundreds of his supporters to storm the Capitol, the seat of Congress, on January 6, 2021 to prevent the certification of the victory of his Democratic opponent, current President Joe Biden.
The citizens’ group invoked the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution from 1868. This amendment provides for the exclusion from public duties of any person who, after taking an oath to defend the Constitution, has committed acts of “rebellion”. .
At the time, this text was aimed at supporters of the defeated Southern Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-1865) and, according to Crew, has been quoted at least eight times throughout American history.
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