In a significant ruling, a Colorado judge overseeing a lawsuit aimed at removing former President Donald J. Trump’s name from the 2024 presidential ballot has rejected the challenge. The judge has further instructed the Secretary of State to ensure that Trump’s name appears on the 2024 election ballot.
In September, a coalition of six Republicans and unaffiliated Colorado voters, including former state and federal officials, filed a lawsuit seeking to disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 presidential ballot.
The plaintiffs are Norma Anderson, Michelle Priola, Claudine Cmarada, Krista Kafer, Kathi Wright, and Christopher Castilian.
The case argues that Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies any individual from holding federal office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
According to the lawsuit:
Donald Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Before the election, he made plans to cast doubt on and undermine confidence in our nation’s election infrastructure. After the election, he knowingly sought to subvert our Constitution and system of elections through a sustained campaign of lies. His efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when he incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol by a mob who believed they were following his orders, and refused to protect the Capitol or call off the mob for nearly three hours as the attack unfolded.
Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power were part of an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. Because Trump took these actions after he swore an oath to support the Constitution, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits him from being President and from qualifying for the Colorado ballot for President in 2024…
Racism and white supremacy—the same virulent ideologies that led to the Civil War and, in its wake, the Fourteenth Amendment—pervaded Trump’s insurrection and the movement surrounding it. Ahead of January 6th, Trump and his allies directed their false claims of election fraud at cities with large Black populations, targeting and specifically identifying “urban” areas in Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta. They sought to coerce and intimidate officials in those jurisdictions to invalidate the votes of millions of Black Americans.
In October, a Democrat judge rejected Trump’s effort to shut down the lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot, citing the 14th Amendment.
Judge Wallace ripped Trump’s arguments against the lawsuit:
“If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency,” she wrote. “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”
The Trump campaign blasted the Democrat judge in response to her latest ruling.
“She is going against the clear weight of legal authority. We are confident the rule of law will prevail, and this decision will be reversed – whether at the Colorado Supreme Court, or at the U.S. Supreme Court,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said. “To keep the leading candidate for President of the United States off the ballot is simply wrong and un-American.”
Earlier this month, the radical leftist attorneys in Colorado opened their argument to toss President Trump from the ballot in the state.
During their opening remarks, the far-left attorneys shared two clips of President Trump’s speech at the Ellipse to a million supporters on January 6, 2021.
They omitted the part where President Trump told his supporters to be PEACEFUL!
In an effort to remove Trump from the ballot, DC Metropolitan Police Officer Danny Hodges testified under oath about the injuries he sustained on January 6.
In previous testimony before the House January 6 Committee, Hodges said he continues to be haunted by the events on January 6 after he was ‘pinned’ in a doorway at the Capitol.
Hodges told the Colorado court that he “experienced pain and bruising” about his body on his “skull and hand.”
“I had a contusion on my head from being struck with my own baton which I believe resulted in concussion as I experienced a headache for two weeks after the fact. I had lacerations on the face. Bleeding from the mouth and pain in my eye from someone attempting to gouge it out,” Hodges said.
However, as Julie Kelly noted, photos posted by Officer Hodges on Facebook on January 7 of his injuries – just one day after the January 6 Capitol protest – tell a different story.
Here are photos he posted on FB on 1/7 of his injuries from the previous day.
No swollen hand. No large contusion on his head. No evidence of an attempt to gouge out his eye.
Hodges—like Fanone, Gonell, and Dunn—lied about his injuries. pic.twitter.com/scHgF9xfzf
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) October 31, 2023
Hodges also falsely claimed police had been “seizing guns all day” and believed protesters were better armed than cops in full riot gear.
On the second day of the hearing, the petitioner’s attorney called Professor William Banks from Syracuse University to testify about the President’s authority over the National Guard regarding the US Capitol.
While Mockingbird outlets are quick to “fact-check” whether or not President Trump authorized the deployment of the National Guard, Kash Patel, who was the Chief of Staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, tells a different story. In his Kash’s Corner podcast, Patel writes:
Two days before the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump personally authorized the use of up to 20,000 National Guardsmen to support local law enforcement if requested. But no request, as required by law, came from the Capitol police or from Mayor Muriel Bowser, says Kash Patel, who was serving as chief of staff at the Department of Defense at the time.
On January 5th, 2021, Mayor Bowser sent a letter addressed to then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, and Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller assuring them that “the Metropolitan Police Department is prepared for this week’s First Amendment Activities” and that they have coordinated with federal agencies, “namely the US Park Police, US Capitol Police, and US Secret Service.”
Despite Professor Banks’ testimony in this absurd hearing to remove the Republican front-runner for President from the ballot without any convictions that would qualify such removal, there is clear evidence that President Trump acted as he should: he authorized the National Guard if requested. Mayor Bowser made it perfectly clear through precedent and her own words that she did not want extra federal assistance and the SSAA and HSAA were slow to respond to requests from Chief Sund for support from the National Guard.
But of course, “Blame Trump.”
On the fourth day of the lawsuit aimed at barring former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado, Congressman Ken Buck was called to testify by Trump’s defense team.
Congressman Ken Buck was tasked with discrediting the January 6 committee’s report which alleges Trump’s involvement in an insurrection. Buck provided testimony remotely from his office in Washington, D.C.
Buck asserted that the committee’s approach was biased against Trump and motivated by political vendetta. Buck highlighted its failure to cross-examine certain witnesses, challenge specific pieces of evidence, and subpoena particular documents that could have negated allegations against Trump.
“It’s like going into a courtroom as a prosecutor, not having a defense counsel or a defendant. I think, in order to be able to judge someone’s culpability, you’ve got to be able to hear both sides of the story, and in this case, there was not another side,” Buck said.
Buck’s primary testimony focused solely on his experiences from Jan. 6 and his perspectives on the report from the January 6 committee, according to 9 News.
On Friday, Democrat judge Sarah Wallace, overseeing a lawsuit to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election ballot rejected the challenge.
In her ruling, Wallace wrote:
“While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments on both sides, the Court holds that the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the Amendment applies combined with the fact that Section Three specifies that the disqualifying oath is one to “support” the Constitution whereas the Presidential oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, it appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.”
Wallace wrote in her conclusion:
Pursuant to the above, the Court ORDERS the Secretary of State to place Donald J. Trump on the presidential primary ballot when it certifies the ballot on January 5, 2024.
BREAKING: The Colorado judge overseeing the lawsuit to remove Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot has REJECTED the challenge and ordered the Secretary of State to place Donald J. Trump’s name on the 2024 election ballot
“While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments… pic.twitter.com/fRyvgykvhW
— George (@BehizyTweets) November 18, 2023
You can read the ruling here.
Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court flatly rejected a bid to block President Trump from the primary ballot.
Minnesota’s high court last Thursday held a hearing on whether Trump could be blocked from the 2024 ballot.
8 Minnesota voters filed a lawsuit citing the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the ballot. A leftist lawyer appeared before the Minnesota Supreme Court last Thursday to argue the state has the authority to block Trump from the 2024 ballot.
Also this week, a Michigan judge dismissed a challenge aimed at preventing former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s ballot for the 2024 presidential election.
This ruling came as a response to a lawsuit filed by a group of Michigan voters in September.
Critics argued that Trump’s actions in trying to overturn the 2020 election results and his role in the events of January 6, 2021, violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, allegedly disqualifying him from holding office.
“The Fourteenth Amendment arguments of plaintiffs present a political question that is nonjusticiable at the present time,” Judge James Robert Redford noted in his ruling.
