With an unprecedented ruling that could change the course of elections and US history, The Colorado Supreme Court has banned Donald Trump from that state’s Republican primaries for inciting the January 6, 2021 assault on Congress. Splitting 4 to 3, the judges accepted the appeal of a group of voters and applied for the first time to a presidential candidate the 14th amendment, which prohibits officials involved in an “insurrection” or “riot” against the constitution they swore to uphold: an 1868 rule designed to prevent Confederate conspirators from holding public roles after the end of the Civil War.
The decision, suspended until January 4, the eve of the deadline for printing ballots in the “Centennial State”, concerns only the primaries scheduled for Super Tuesday on March 5, but could also have consequences in the general elections in November, and not only in Colorado. If other similar sentences arrive (for now denied in the lawsuits filed in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Michigan) it would be more difficult for Trump to secure the nomination. And if he were to take it anyway, he would risk not being able to be voted for in other states that were perhaps more easily conquerable than Colorado, considered solidly Democratic.
An earthquake effect clearly present to the judges of the Supreme Court of that State, who said they were «aware of the scope and weight of the questions we face, but at the same time also of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without allowing ourselves to be influenced by the public reaction to the decisions that the law requires us to take.” “Electoral interference from the banana republic”, denounced the tycoon on his social network Truth, accusing Joe Biden of having orchestrated all the “false criminal and civil indictments” against him.
While his campaign attacked a “completely wrong and antidemocratic” decision, announcing an appeal to the federal Supreme Court, where the tycoon can count on a majority of six conservative judges (out of nine), including three appointed by him. The president’s response was immediate: “There is no doubt that Trump supported an insurrection and now he is making it worse,” Biden said, recognizing however that it is up to the Supreme Court to decide on the 14th amendment. It will therefore be the wise men who will decide the fate of the next American presidential elections, as happened in 2000, when they blocked the recount of the votes in Florida requested by Al Gore in the narrow victory of George W. Bush.
The Supreme Court will have to decide whether the rule also applies to a presidential candidate, with a literal interpretation (which does not mention the office of the president) or the spirit of the rule (which seems to concern all public officials), subject to judicial verification or not of the “insurrection” or “riot” that Trump allegedly incited against the Capitol (also requested by the three minority justices in Colorado).
Investigation that passes through the federal trial set for March 4 but suspended in its preliminary activity pending another decision from the Supreme Court: the one on the appeal for immunity, which the tycoon asked not to examine before the appeals in the lower levels , to gain time and postpone the trial. For the wise men it will be quite a dilemma: if they decide in favor of the 14th amendment, Trump could be banned in many states, with the risk of violent reactions from his fans; otherwise the tycoon will be able to use the story as a propaganda tool, to repeat that he is the victim of a political conspiracy.
Furthermore, the unknown regarding immunity remains. The party is with him and even his fiercest rival, Chris Christie, does not agree with the decision without there having been a trial first. Biden’s campaign instead hopes that the ruling will support the thesis that the event at the Capitol was an attempted insurrection, as the president reiterated today. This is what the judges of the Colorado Supreme Court also wrote, confirming in this sense the decisions of the lower courts but overturning them in the part in which they excluded the applicability of the 14th amendment to a candidate for the White House.