Disqualification of Donald Trump: Supreme Court judges were skeptical

Beige jacket, aviator sunglasses, there was Norma Anderson at 91. This former Republican elected official will live on in American political history since Trump v. Anderson.

Norma Anderson is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that resulted in the Colorado Supreme Court banning Donald Trump’s name from appearing on the state’s primary ballot, finding that he “knowingly organized and incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol in a desperate attempt.” to prevent the counting of the electoral votes cast against him.” The former Republican president filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court, which began discussing it on Thursday in Washington.

The anti-Trump crowd gathered outside the facility, which allowed only 50 members of the public, in addition to members of the Supreme Court bar and journalists, into the day of hearings, where lawyers for each side presented their arguments on the matter. Question: Why may or may not the insurrection clause included in the 14th Amendment of the sacred US Constitution apply to Trump?

The nine justices apparently did not comment on the topic, but their questions throughout the two-hour hearing showed how skeptical they were.

“Only a few states left to decide the presidential election”

Without addressing the merits of the case—whether Trump incited his supporters to try to overturn the results of the lost 2020 election, an issue that is set to be tried next month in Washington—the justices, both conservative and progressive, expressed their concerns about the passage of the State , taking drastic measures will likely affect the presidential election next November.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts told John Murray, the lawyer representing Norma Anderson, three other Republican electors and two independent electors behind Colorado’s lawsuit against Trump, that legal affirmation of their position would lead to states disqualifying the Republican favorite and others – do the same against Joe Biden.

“There will only be a few states left that will decide the presidential election. “These are quite dire consequences,” he warned, arguing that it also went against the spirit of the 14th Amendment, written in 1868 after the American Civil War, the Civil War (1861–1865), aimed at preventing the loss of the Southern states and then seceding states from seizing power.

“The question you face is why one state should decide who can be president of the United States,” said liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

Alarming impact on democracy?

Conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, focused on the impact it could have on democracy if states could individually remove candidates from their ballots. “Your position largely disenfranchises voters,” he told John Murray.

Who bluntly responded that “the reason we are here is because President Trump tried to disenfranchise 80 million Americans who voted against him, and the Constitution does not require that he be given another chance.”

Donald Trump did not attend the hearing. His lawyers’ submission to the Supreme Court argued that “the effort to disqualify votes threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and promises to spark chaos if other courts and government officials follow suit.” “The Colorado Example”.

Six Colorado voters condemn the argument, which they perceive as a threat of political violence from a candidate who had no qualms about it. “We have already seen Trump lash out,” they wrote in a document released before the hearing.

Regarding the section of the 14th Amendment that disqualifies officers of the United States who participated in or encouraged insurrection while carrying out the mission of “upholding” the Constitution, Trump argues that “the President is not US officer as that term is used in the Constitution,” his note states, and that he never uttered the word “support.”

During his inauguration ceremony in Washington on January 20, 2017, Trump, like any president, swore with his hand on the Bible to “preserve, defend and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most liberal of the nine sages, said Thursday that it is “a bit of a complicated rule designed to only benefit (Trump).”