Donald Trump’s legal team has argued against an attempt to have him thrown off the presidential ballot in Colorado in 2024 by suggesting the wording of the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause does not apply to him.
The Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on a lawsuit filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) watchdog group and Republican figures, who argue that Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, violated Section Three of the 14th Amendment and therefore he should be prohibited from running for the White House again.
The section states a person who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to support the Constitution should be barred from running for office again. In a previous ruling, lower court judge Sarah B. Wallace said that Trump had “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, the day of the Capitol riot, but should remain on Colorado’s primary ballot as the wording of the 14th Amendment does not specifically mention preventing people from running for the presidency.
In their appeal against the Colorado lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers reiterated that the wording of Section Three does not apply to people running for president and that Trump technically did not swear an oath to “support” the Constitution. Instead, during his January 2017 inauguration, Trump swore to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution during his role as president.
“The framers excluded the office of President from Section Three purposefully,” Trump’s legal team wrote. “Section Three does not apply, because the presidency is not an office ‘under the United States,’ the president is not an ‘officer of the United States,’ and President Trump did not take an oath ‘to support the Constitution of the United States.'”
The argument that Trump did not support the Constitution in his oath has been criticized on social media.
“Wow in a legal proceeding Trump is now arguing he didn’t violate the 14th Amendment by inciting the Jan 6 insurrection because he ‘never took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States.’ This treacherous criminal is head of the Republican Party,” Democratic New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Tristan Snell, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general for New York state, wrote: “Donald Trump is arguing the president is not an ‘officer of the United States’ — and so he can’t be disqualified from office under the 14th Amendment for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Yes, you read that correctly. This is how bad his legal arguments are.”
Former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann posted: “Crazy as it sounds Trump made that exact same argument to the Colorado trial judge and somehow it is the only argument the judge agreed with him on.”
Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary, has denied all wrongdoing in connection to the January 6 attack and has described attempts to prevent him from running for office again by citing the 14th Amendment as a “trick” to prevent him winning the 2024 election.
Geoffrey Blue, a Colorado-based attorney for Trump, previously used the same argument as to why the 14th Amendment cannot be cited to stop Trump from the presidency again in an October 9 filing to try to have the lawsuit thrown out.
“Because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President,” Blue wrote.
“If they wanted to include the President in the reach of Section Three, they could have done so by expanding the language of which type of oath would bring an ‘officer under the strictures of Section Three. They did not do so, and no number of semantic arguments will change this simple fact. As such, Section Three does not apply to President Trump.”
Oral arguments are scheduled to begin on December 6 after the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on Wallace’s decision that Trump can remain on the ballot in the Centennial State.
