November 21, 2023 11:06 AM UTC

Donald J. Trump, Insurrectionist

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger reports that the Colorado Supreme Court has accepted the appeals from both sides and will hear the case early next month:

NEW: Colorado Supreme Court agrees to hear the Trump ballot access case. Oral argument: Dec. 6.

Both sides appealed after a Denver District Judge ruled the 14th Amendment didn't apply to President, but that Trump engaged in insurrection.https://t.co/JUuHPVH3Rv #copolitics

— Marshall Zelinger (@Marshall9News) November 21, 2023

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A Denver District Court judge issued a ruling late Friday in the lawsuit filed by a group of Colorado unaffiliated and Republican voters seeking to throw ex-President Donald Trump off the 2024 Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment’s Insurrections Clause, presently getting its first due process workout since passage following the American Civil War to keep former Confederates out of office. In a split ruling, Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled against plaintiffs and ordered that Trump be placed on the ballot.

But as the Washington Post reports, even though Trump celebrated this ruling all weekend on social media and a rally in Iowa, there’s a YUGE caveat:

Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace’s ruling said that Trump’s conduct met the standard for disqualification under the 14th Amendment — that he “engaged in insurrection” — but that the amendment doesn’t apply to the president.

Wallace walked through the evidence for the first component of her finding in detail over 102 pages. She focused on the timeline of Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021 — which she said showed that Trump desired this outcome. And she documented his history of promoting and legitimizing political violence — which she said helps prove he incited the riot.

“The Court concludes that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification,” Wallace wrote. [Pols emphasis]

Plaintiffs in the case filed their appeal yesterday to the Colorado Supreme Court of the adverse part of Judge Wallace’s ruling, but what could matter more in the long run is the detailed research backing up her opinion that Trump wilfully incited the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 with the goal of overturning the 2020 presidential election–the first such conclusive ruling by any court–which is now a part of the record to inform the other legal proceedings underway against Trump. If you for whatever reason didn’t fully trust the report of the January 6th Select Committee, here you have another copiously-sourced account of Trump’s personal role in the 2020 coup plot to reckon with.

As a result Trump’s attorneys led by former Secretary of State Scott Gessler have also appealed the case they supposedly won, obviously relieved with the ruling that Trump should be on the ballot but alarmed by the implications of the court’s finding that Trump engaged in insurrection:

The relatively narrow basis by which Trump was excluded from enforcement of the 14th Amendment in the ruling could conceivably be overturned on appeal, which would immediately make the finding by the court that Trump engaged in the behavior proscribed in the 14th Amendment the relevant consideration once again.

And that is why Trump’s legal team is appealing the ruling that Trump spent the whole weekend celebrating.