Trump Disqualified From Colorado Ballot by 4-3 Judicial Ruling
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the establishment effort to avoid facing Donald Trump before the electorate at the ballot box saw one of its gravest and most unprecedented escalations yet.
Just as Trump rises to his highest point yet in polling for 2024, and as Biden sinks to his worst level of disapproval yet, a state court in Colorado full of Democratic Party-appointed judges just decided yesterday by a 4-3 ruling that Trump is ineligible to appear on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot because, in the view of these four judges, he is guilty of being an insurrectionist and thus ineligible to run for the presidency under the 14th Amendment.
There are so many grave and glaring flaws in the legal reasoning of this decision, which we will show you, but one need not have a law degree to detect its most significant error.
Donald Trump, despite being indicted in four separate jurisdictions, has never once been charged with, let alone convicted of, the crime of insurrection.
Both DOJ Special Prosecutor Jack Smith as well as the Democratic Party Prosecutor in Atlanta charged Trump with multiple felonies relating to his conduct regarding the 2020 election.
And yet both of them, despite being able to do so, opted not to charge Trump with engaging in an insurrection or even inciting an insurrection.
But no matter, these four state court judges, without any of the due process required for judging someone guilty of a crime, have decreed that he is nonetheless guilty of that crime, one with which he has never even been charged, and thus never had the opportunity to claim all of the constitutional safeguards guaranteed to someone when charged with a crime.
As this court itself recognized, this ruling will almost certainly now be heard by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
That's why they stayed the order until January 4th to give the court time to say whether it will rule on it or not.
And this is especially so since the same liberal advocacy groups that spearheaded this case in Colorado have done the same in at least 14 other states, where they're trying to block the presidential frontrunner, meaning the person who more Americans say they want to be president next year than anyone else, from even appearing on the ballot.
Yet again what we have here are the very same people in politics and media who endlessly glorify themselves as the sole guardians of American democracy, relying on classically anti-democratic weapons to try to cling to political power.
Beyond this ruling, Trump has been charged with felony counts in four other cases, the first one brought by a liberal prosecutor in Manhattan, the other state case brought by the Democratic Party machine prosecutor in Atlanta, and then the two federal cases brought by a special prosecutor under the auspices of the Biden Justice Department.
Regardless of one's views on January 6th and Trump's conduct with respect to it, it is beyond dispute now that the primary tactic of the Democratic Party and their media allies for winning in 2024 is not to convince voters to vote for them, but instead to imprison their chief political opponent and to prevent American citizens forcibly from voting for him.
And whatever else this is, saving democracy most definitely has nothing to do with it.
Quite the contrary.
On top of the ongoing attempts to impose increasing levels of constraints on the expression of political speech, it is genuinely hard to imagine a more glaring and more dangerous full-frontal assault on democratic values than what American liberals and the Democratic Party is doing to prevent Trump from running or even remaining free.
We will spend tonight's episode examining this ruling and showing you the legal components of it.
We'll show you the critical political context and the legal context in which it has arisen, and we'll examine the implications.
Suffice to say, liberals and Democrats are really playing with fire in this country, trifling with the fundamentals of American democratic life.
And other than their most ardent followers, it's hard to believe that anyone is failing to see right through this.
That's almost certainly one of the reasons that every time they abuse and weaponize the justice system of the United States against Trump further, his candidacy only seems to get stronger.
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Well, for now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
As the polls for Joe Biden get worse and as the polls for Donald Trump get better, and that is absolutely what has been happening unmistakably over the past several months, Trump's lead and that is absolutely what has been happening unmistakably over the past several months, Trump's lead in the Republican primary has been growing in his lead in the key swing states is growing as well.
Democrats are panicking.
And they are turning to increasingly desperate and anti-democratic means simply to keep Trump off the ballot, thinking that is the only way that an aging and decrepit Joe Biden possibly has any chance to win.
All as they claim that they're saving democracy by burning our democracy down.
Now one of the most dangerous threats that they had posed was to try and charge Donald Trump with incitement to an insurrection or inciting the violence on January 6th by claiming criminally that the speech he gave on January 6th constituted criminal incitement to violence.
And on June 26th of this year, we did an entire show based on this threat warning that clear Supreme Court rulings, especially Brandenburg and Claiborne, which we walked our audience through the meaning of those rulings, are the key seminal First Amendment cases of the latter half of the 20th century that continue to govern what free speech in the United States is, that essentially you would have to violate
Brandenburg and Cleburne in order to criminalize Donald Trump's January 6th speech by claiming that it was anything other than free expression.
You might hate that speech.
You may think what he said and did in denying the outcome of the election and encouraging people to march to the Capitol peacefully was repellent.
Whatever your views of it are though, there's no question it is well within The free speech protections of the First Amendment as the Supreme Court has defined it primarily in those two cases and then the progeny from those precedents.
And we were extremely alarmed that Jack Smith, under a lot of pressure, might indict Donald Trump by trying to create a theory that that speech somehow was outside of the bounds of Brandenburg and the First Amendment and that he could be charged with inciting an insurrection.
Now when the indictment from Jack Smith was handed down, charging Trump with multiple felonies, four felonies in connection with his conduct after the election, here you see the AP report on that, where on August 2nd, just a few days after we did that report, You see, Trump indicted for efforts to overturn the 2020 election and block transfer of power.
The most notable part about this indictment, other than all the legal flaws and dangers it had, which we reported on and dissected, was that he was not charged, Donald Trump was not charged in this indictment by Jack Smith with participating in an insurrection or inciting an insurrection.
Here was the AP report.
Quote, Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy.
The indictment includes charges of conspiring to defraud the US, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, Obstructing an official proceeding and violating a post-Civil War reconstruction era civil rights statute that makes it a crime to conspire to violate rights that are guaranteed by this Constitution, in this case, the right to vote.
Now, some people might hear that and think, oh, that is an insurrection.
But it just isn't.
Under the U.S.
Criminal Code, there is a crime called rebellion or insurrection That covers anybody who incites or engages in an insurrection or rebellion against the U.S.
government.
It's U.S.
Criminal Code 2383.
We can put this on the screen.
There you see the law itself.
And here's the title of this law.
Rebellion or Insurrection.
And it states, whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in And this is the key word, engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof or gives aid or comfort thereto shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years or both and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
Now, if Trump were convicted of this statute and he were found to have engaged in or incited an insurrection,
You could at least make a more valid argument that he is now ineligible to run under the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone from holding office who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States government, which was a constitutional provision enacted after the Civil War designed to ban any members of the Confederacy from holding office, especially if they didn't express remorse for what they did.
That's the kind of insurrection that we're talking about or rebellion, a major civil war against the US government that divided the country, not a two or three hour ride at the Capitol that Trump wasn't even present for.
So the only way to accuse Trump of participating in or inciting an insurrection is if you claim that that January 6th speech he gave to the crowd Where not only didn't he tell them to use violence, he explicitly said to go to the Capitol and peacefully express their grievances, somehow constituted an incitement to an insurrection.
And because of the difficulty of charging him with that, namely the First Amendment, Jack Smith opted not to.
And the same is true of the Democratic Party machine prosecutor in Atlanta, who charged him with state crimes connected to the 2020 election.
So he has never been charged with inciting an insurrection.
Never.
And if he had been charged with that, that would trigger a whole litany of constitutional safeguards and protections that Trump, like any other criminal defendant, would be entitled to claim.
such as a jury before his peers, the right of cross-examination, the right of due process, the right to an attorney, all of those constitutional rights that attach to anyone accused of committing a crime, and he would have the ability to contest the validity of these charges.
But because he's not been accused of a crime of insurrection, he has had no ability to contest the allegation that he is guilty of a criminal insurrection because that has not been asserted against him.
Nonetheless, this state court in Colorado that is filled with seven Supreme Court justices, all of whom are appointed by Democratic Party governors, Colorado is a very blue state.
They are governed by Democratic governors.
These Democratic governors pick Democratic Party judges to fill the entire Colorado state judiciary with, including the Colorado Supreme Court.
All seven of them are Democratic judges, and four out of the seven Ruled that Trump is ineligible or disqualified from appearing on the Colorado ballot by virtue of the fact that he's ineligible to assume the presidency given that he is guilty of insurrection, a crime for which he has never been charged.
Here's the New York Times report on it today.
Trump is disqualified from 2024 ballot, Colorado court says, an explosive ruling.
Quote, the decision, the first by a court to find that Donald Trump is ineligible to hold office again because he engaged in insurrection, is likely to put a monumental case before the US Supreme Court.
The Colorado Supreme Court was the first in the nation to find that section three of the 14th amendment, which disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the constitution after taking an oath to support it, Applies to Mr. Trump, an argument that his opponents have been making around the country.
The ruling directs the Colorado Secretary of State to exclude Mr. Trump's name from the state's Republican primary ballot.
It does not address the general election.
Now, the only people who have standing to bring this case in Colorado are Republican voters or independent voters, namely people eligible to vote in the primary.
And they go to court and they say, our rights as electorates would be compromised or violated if someone appears on the ballot who's ineligible to be president, and this is Donald Trump.
So nominally the case was brought in the name of a few Republican voters, a few independent voters who hate Trump.
The reality though, these cases are being spearheaded by a liberal advocacy group called CRU.
And here is the president of Crew, Noah Bookbinder, who was very eager to take credit for this decision.
Quote, we just won before the Colorado Supreme Court in our challenge to keep Donald Trump off the ballot as disqualified under the 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection.
A huge moment for democracy.
More to come soon.
This makes me physically sick.
These people have been spending years now depicting themselves as the only guardians... Excuse me.
I've talked about before the horribleness of feeling like you have to sneeze while you're alive, but it's just the nature of being alive so you've got to stop and sneeze.
These people make me physically sick.
They are claiming endlessly for years now that only they are the guardians of American democracy, that American democracy is under existential threat from Donald Trump, and therefore everything they do, censoring the internet, trying to imprison Trump,
Putting his supporters in jail, keeping them in solitary confinement for months, criminalizing the Trump movement by calling it an insurrectionary movement, and now we're trying to remove him from the ballot so voters can't vote for him.
But that somehow is not an attack on democracy, which of course it is, but a vindication of democracy.
This is a huge moment for democracy.
To remove the person more people want to be president than anyone else from the presidential ballot.
This is something that when Vladimir Putin does, when he imprisons Viktor Nalvany, even though Putin is way more popular in Russia than Nalvany, we say, oh, Russian democracy is a fraud.
Putin imprisons his main ally, his main opponent, and doesn't allow him to run.
This is what the Egyptian dictator that the United States supports, General Sisi, they just had an election there.
He won re-election with 92% of the vote because no one can run against him who has any meaningful voice with the people.
They go to prison, they're killed.
This is what every country we accuse of being anti-democratic does that the United States is now doing.
And it's being spearheaded by this group.
Now, I just remembered today That about 12 or 13 years ago, I was on the board of this organization, CRU.
And in 2010, I quit the board publicly because the head of this group had condemned Julian Assange.
And it's supposed to be a group that defends transparency.
That's its purpose.
Transparency and clean government.
And the president of the group came out and condemned Julian Assange after he had Published secrets showing that the U.S.
had committed war crimes under President Bush and then President Obama.
And so I quit in protest over their condemnation of WikiLeaks because I thought I was joining the board of a nonpartisan group that favored transparency.
There you see from Politico that I quit that organization over their condemnation of WikiLeaks.
Now, just to show you how widespread this movement is to get Trump off the ballot because Democrats know that they can't.
Beat him!
Here is the group, Citizen Free Press, breaking.
California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kolonakis calls on the California Secretary of State to, quote, explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential primary ballot.
And here's the letter she wrote to the Secretary of State, essentially invoking the same theory that the Colorado Supreme Court just used, citing, in fact, The Colorado ruling to say we should now do this too.
Does that sound like democracy to you for Democrats?
Democrats in every one of these states?
In these blue states to try and bar Trump from being on the ballot as the primary candidate?
Because they're petrified that if Biden faces him they're going to lose?
Here from the New York Times today, here are the other states where Trump's ballot eligibility faces a challenge.
At least 16 states beyond Colorado currently have open legal challenges to the former president's eligibility for office, but what happens next depends on the U.S.
Supreme Court.
So there are 14 cases brought by these same activist groups based on these same theories.
And many of them are, again, in Democratic blue states like Michigan, Oregon, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.
And then you have 11 other states' lawsuits where these cases are in federal courts as well.
Now, here is an important component of this story that has not been widely reported.
Back in November, A lower level federal court judge in Colorado.
Sorry, a state court judge in Colorado.
This is where this case first went.
It didn't go first to the Supreme Court.
It went to a lower level judge in Colorado.
And she basically ruled against Trump on every single last issue.
That's why this appeal was so hard for him.
She had a trial.
She ruled that the January 6th report from Liz Cheney and the Democrats was admissible evidence.
She credited the credibility of almost every anti-Trump witness while dismissing the credibility of multiple key Trump witnesses.
She concluded that he absolutely was guilty of inciting an insurrection.
She ruled that he gave a speech on January 6th that fell outside of the protections of Brandenburg because he not only incited an imminent lawless act, but intended to do so.
She basically adopted the entire MSNBC, DNC, CNN script of what Trump did on January 6th, one paragraph after the next.
She found that he was an insurrectionist.
And the only reason she did not remove him from the ballot, she ordered him to appear on the ballot, she rejected the lawsuit.
The only reason was because of a legal technicality that she ruled that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to the President and Vice President.
It only applies to every other office in the United States, but not to President and Vice President.
There is a legal theory that's been around, that if you read the text of the 14th Amendment, it does seem to go out of its way to exclude the President and Vice President.
It doesn't mention them.
It just mentions office holders, and so there's been an argument that it doesn't apply to candidates for President and Vice President.
And so after spending dozens of pages ruling against Trump on one issue after the next, and saying that he incited a violent insurrection on purpose, that he is an insurrectionist, even though he's never been tried with that, The trial she had was not a real trial, it was just an evidentiary hearing, nothing like a criminal case.
It was like a four day hearing, very quick, none of the protections that you get when you're a criminal defendant.
She ruled against him on everything and that bound the Colorado Supreme Court in a lot of ways in terms of its factual findings.
She just at the last minute on the last page, you read this ruling and you think, this is like reading Rachel Maddow's view of January 6th.
And then when she got to the end, she said, I rule in favor of these plaintiffs on every issue except this one legalistic point that the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to candidates for president or vice president.
Therefore, the petition is rejected.
But it bound the parties with these factual findings that were completely against Trump.
And as it turns out, this judge who did that is such a Democratic Party partisan.
Is so obviously a resistance liberal who supports the narrative that she put into a legal ruling well before she ever got the case, that there were people in Colorado arguing that she should have recused herself because of how blatantly political she is as a Democrat and a liberal.
Here is one example from the Colorado Gazette.
It said Trump's judge fails the standard of appearance by George Brauchler.
Quote, if the judge in the Denver trial of whether Donald Trump is eligible to run for president rules against him, this is before she issued the ruling, there will be plenty of fodder for those looking for reasons to believe the fix was in and there was no fair due process.
The judge is Sarah Wallace.
She's the one who wrote that first opinion that the Supreme Court just rejected.
It ultimately rejected the petition, but like I said, only on a very legalistic ground after finding against Trump.
And he said, I believe Judge Sarah Wallace is qualified, intelligent, competent, and unbiased in this matter, and she should have recused herself from hearing this case.
The applicable rules make clear that the appearance of partiality is what matters, and not whether it truly exists.
These are ethical rules designed to protect the perception of the court as a fair arbiter of justice.
That perception is now tarnished.
To begin with, several plaintiffs, including some registered Republicans, have sued Democratic Secretary of State Jenna Griswold to prevent her from allowing Coloradans to have the option of voting for Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
Griswold agrees with those suing her.
She's a liberal, and she wants to lose this lawsuit.
She wants to be banned from putting Trump on the ballot.
Characteristic of her consistent and ongoing condemnations of Trump is her unequivocal social media post in September, quote, Donald Trump incited the insurrection and tried to steal the 2020 election from the American people.
That's the Secretary of State who's overseeing the Colorado election saying that.
That is awkward for Trump.
It gets more awkward for Trump, who figuratively sits at Griswold's table in the courtroom.
Representing Griswold, in part, is Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser.
He's the Colorado Attorney General.
Weiser called for Trump's impeachment as a result of January 6, 2021.
So you see these Colorado officials Admitting their complete bias against Trump.
They hate Trump.
They think he should have been impeached for January 6th.
They already proclaimed him guilty of insurrection.
And the judge in this case who played such a vital role in finding these facts, Judge Wallace, contributed to the political campaigns of both Griswold and Weiser while waiting to become a judge.
She has never contributed or appears never to have contributed to a Republican.
Less than two months after being appointed by Governor Jared Polis, the Democratic Governor of Colorado, and again despite being a judge-in-waiting, Wallace contributed $100 to the Colorado Turnout Project.
The Our Story page of their website, the first page that appears, claims the project was, quote, formed shortly after Colorado Republicans refused to condemn the political extremists who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
They announced the project, quote, aims to prevent violent insurrectionists.
Finally, the project makes clear its partisan goals, quote, to take the remaining three Republican congressional seats in our state.
So you have this judge, she donated her own personal money to a group that said our mission is to make Trump pay for the insurrection, to remove the three Republican members of the House representing our state and replace them with Democrats.
And she contributed money to the Secretary of State and the Colorado Attorney General, both of whom are Democrats, and both of whom made clear their view that Donald Trump was an insurrectionist.
She's the one who decided to sit in judgment of the question of this case that required her to decide, is Trump guilty of insurrection?
And needless to say, one paragraph after the next sounded like somebody who just sits in front of the TV watching MSNBC.
Or who donates money to Democratic and Liberal activist groups and Democratic Party candidates.
And every finding of fact that she issued, which again, the Supreme Court was bound in its ruling, essentially, made clear that she buys the entire resistance narrative about Donald Trump.
That was not a biased or impartial judge.
It was the exact opposite.
And when you have the question of whether you're going to ban a former president from a ballot, And this is the argument I've been making with the indictments of Trump.
It is vital to at very least go out of your way to make sure it seems politically unbiased so you don't contaminate the justice system and seem like you're weaponizing it for political ends.
And that's why it was so disturbing That the four indictments of Trump came from a liberal Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, a liberal machine, Democratic Party machine prosecutor in Atlanta, and then two federal cases operating under the auspices of the Biden Justice Department, the Justice Department that answers to President Biden, whose primary opponent is Donald Trump.
And now this case is even worse.
Now, as I said, The District Court case in November actually rejected the petition to remove Trump, but only after ruling against him on every last issue.
So here is that District Court ruling from November 17th.
It didn't get a lot of media attention because it refused to remove Trump from the ballot, but it completely contaminated this case and showed what Democratic Party judges are willing to do.
Here's part of what she wrote, quote, the court further concludes that the events on and around January 6, 2021, easily satisfy the definition of an insurrection.
Then I met a two hour riot.
By people, none of whom wielded guns, inside the Capitol.
And remember, the only people who died on that day, on January 6th, were four Trump supporters.
One of whom, Ashley Babbitt, was shot by the police, the Capitol Hill Police.
Two of whom died of heart attacks because they really hadn't left their couch in a long time and were very unhealthy.
The idea that they were going to lead some sort of insurrection against the most militarized government in the history of the world is a complete and utter joke.
And then another who died of a speed overdose.
All Trump supporters died on January 6th.
Of course they lied continuously.
The media did, as we covered extensively at the time by claiming that the Trump protesters bashed the head in of a Capitol Hill police officer with a fire extinguisher and murdered him.
When the autopsy found that he didn't die on January 6th, but January 7th, and he died of natural causes.
He didn't even go to the hospital.
He called his parents that night and said he was fine.
So, there were police who were injured, but the only people who died on this day were four Trump supporters.
And yet, this judge says, it clearly, easily satisfies the definition of an insurrection.
Quote, in the context of Trump's speech as a whole, as well as the broader context of Trump's efforts to inflame his supporters through outliers of voter fraud in the weeks leading up to January 6th, and his longstanding pattern of encouraging political violence among his supporters, the court finds that his call on that day to quote, fight and quote, fight like hell, was intended as and was understood by a portion of the crowd as a call to arms
Saying we have to fight like hell, she said, was such an obviously explicit call to violence that it removed the speech from the protected grounds of the First Amendment.
She went on, these findings support the conclusion that President Trump's calls for imminent lawlessness and violence during his speech were likely to incite such imminent lawlessness and violence.
That's the phrase that the U.S.
Supreme Court used in Brandenburg for the only kind of political speech that falls outside of First Amendment protection, inciting imminent lawless violence.
When President Trump told his supporters that they were, quote, allowed to go by very different rules and that if they did not, quote, fight like hell, they would not, quote, have a country anymore, it was likely that his supporters would heed his encouragement and act violently.
We therefore hold that this final prong of the Brandenburg Tests, meaning to remove a political speech from the protection of the political speech, have been met.
In sum, we conclude that President Trump's speech on January 6th was not protected by the First Amendment.
Now, we're going to show you what Trump actually said about violence.
The only thing he said about violence was, don't use it, be peaceful.
But the Brandenburg Court has always said you're allowed to even advocate violence as long as it's not designed to incite imminent violence, meaning you have a crowd gathered and you tell it to go burn a house down.
So, again, if you want to accuse Trump of being an insurrectionist, charge him with that crime.
But that's not what this court did.
Quote, in this court's view, there is a difference between the secretary having the authority To prohibit a candidate from being put on the ballot based on what Ms.
Rudy described as an objective, knowable fact, and prohibiting a candidate from being put on a ballot due to potential constitutional infirmity that has yet to be determined by either a court or Congress.
So this is the key point, which is, obviously Trump has not been charged with an insurrection, with a crime of insurrection, and that's the argument he made.
He never had a trial on that.
And the response of those trying to keep him off the ballot were, well, there's other constitutional requirements.
For example, you can't run for president if you're younger than 35 years of age, or you can't become president if you're younger than 35.
You can't serve more than two terms.
So they were saying, well, if somebody comes here and tries to get on the ballot and they're under 35, or they've already served two terms like President Obama or President Bush, We wouldn't wait for a trial.
Of course we would be able to tell them that they can't be on the ballot.
And this is the one point where the court is saying that there's a difference between something so obvious like age or how many terms you've served as president where you're obviously ineligible and a complex question like whether someone's guilty of an insurrection.
And she's pointing out that there's a difference Between an objective, knowable fact, such as the age, and prohibiting a candidate from being put on the ballot due to potential constitutional infirmity that has yet to be determined by either a court or a congress.
In other words, the question of whether Trump actually engaged in an insurrection is not one that has been determined.
It's not obvious, like someone's age or how many terms they've served.
And therefore, they said, quote, the court holds that the secretary cannot, on her own accord, keep a candidate from appearing on the ballot based on a constitutional infirmity unless that constitutional infirmity is an objective, knowable fact.
Here, whether Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is not an objective or knowable fact, while the court agrees That the Secretary cannot investigate and adjudicate Trump's eligibility.
The election code gives this court that authority.
So she's saying the Secretary of State can't determine if Trump was an insurrectionist, but I'm the court.
I can determine that.
And that's when she went on to say that he is guilty of an insurrection, even though he hasn't had a trial.
So again, everything she's ruling against Trump, his speech was outside of the First Amendment.
He is an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment.
And the only ruling that she issued that caused her to reject this petition to remove him was for Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to apply to Trump, this court must find both that the presidency is an office under the United States and that Trump took an oath as an officer of the United States to support this court must find both that the presidency is an office under The court holds there is scant direct evidence regarding whether the presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification.
The disqualified offices enumerated are presented in descending order, starting with the highest levels of the federal government and descending downward.
It starts with senator or representatives, then lists electors of presidents and vice presidents, and then ends with the catch-all phrase, any office, civil or military, under the United States.
To lump the presidency in with any other civil or military office is odd indeed, and very troubling to the court.
Because as Trump points out, section three explicitly lists all the federal elected positions except president and vice president.
The court holds that it is... The court holds that it is unpersuaded that the drafters intended to include the highest office in the country in the catch-all phrase, office under the United States.
So that is the only reason That November ruling didn't remove Trump from the ballot, but it issued all kinds of damning findings against Trump.
And it was a judge who was so obviously biased against him.
You couldn't find a more flagrant Democratic Party activist or liberal activist than this judge.
She donated money to a resistance group right before she became a judge.
It's almost certain that the only media outlets she watches are the ones that constantly drum into people's head that Trump is an insurrectionist.
And the way courts work is that when you go to a court in the first instance and there's a trial or a hearing of some kind, what the judge finds factually is really not Reversible by the Supreme Court.
They can reverse it on abuse of discretion grounds if it's very clearly wrong, but in general they can give deference to those findings.
The only thing a Supreme Court would really reverse from a lower court is a legal conclusion.
And that is exactly what this Supreme Court did on a 4-3 ruling.
Four judges said this judge below was right about everything.
The only thing she got wrong Was this legal conclusion that President and Vice President are not included in the 14th Amendment prohibition against running if you did an insurrection?
We reversed her on that.
We find the 14th Amendment does apply to the President and therefore Trump is banned from the ballot.
So here's the ruling.
Anderson v. Griswold is the name of the case and this was from yesterday.
And here's the summary of what the Supreme Court, four judges on the Supreme Court, the three judges in dissent all wrote separate opinions.
We're just going to show you a small part of those because the key point they emphasize is the one that I've been emphasizing, which is that Trump has never been charged with this crime that they're using to say that he should be disqualified.
There's no due process to call him an insurrectionist.
But here's what the Colorado Supreme Court said, these four judges and the majority.
Quote, in this appeal from a district court proceeding under the Colorado Election Code, the Supreme Court considers whether former President Donald J. Trump may appear on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot in 2024.
A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act.
Under the election code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot, the court stays its ruling until January 4th, 2024, subject to any further appellate proceedings, meaning to allow the Supreme Court to intervene.
Now, I want to bring up a tweet, I don't know if we have it, of an analysis of who these seven judges of the Supreme Court are.
And actually, they're all Democrats, but the key point, and I'll just explain this to you, was made by Jason Willey, the Washington Post columnist, who's actually quite a good and objective columnist.
And he made a very interesting point, which is that all seven judges on the Colorado Supreme Court are obviously Democrats.
It's a very blue state.
They were appointed by Democratic governors.
Four of them went to Ivy League schools.
Yale, Penn, Harvard.
And three of them went to the University of Denver Law School.
So they're all Democrats.
You can't say the 4-3 ruling broke down on party lines because there are no party lines.
It's a fully Democratic court.
The way it broke down was the four judges who removed Trump from the ballot all went to Ivy League schools.
The three judges who dissented and said the court has no right to remove Trump all went to the University of Denver Law School.
I think the reason why that's so interesting and important is because this is something we've been pounding for a long time, which is what's really going on in the United States and the broader Western world Is that when 2016 happened and British voters enacted Brexit and left the EU, a huge shock to the Western establishment.
And then four months later, they had the biggest shock of all, which is that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become President of the United States.
Western elites went into a panic and they concluded that they can no longer trust their populations to be free, to have free speech, To vote freely in elections because when they do they make the wrong choices and they need to be controlled.
They need to be guided.
That's when this whole disinformation industry emerged funded by billionaires and security state agencies where all of these people from Colleges proclaimed themselves disinformation experts out of nowhere and started to decree what was true and false for people so that we could remove false ideas from the internet so that people weren't contaminated and misled by them anymore.
They only would get elite approved views over the internet.
That's what the censorship regime is about.
That really emerged after 2016.
And now this attempt to put Donald Trump in prison and or remove him from the ballot.
This is a very elite idea, the idea that the peasants cannot be trusted to be free.
And so it's not surprising to me that the division here was between people educated at Ivy League schools on the East Coast and people who went to their local law school in Colorado at the University of Denver.
That was the breakdown.
Now, here's what the court said.
We hold as follows.
And I'm just going to show you the part that differed from the lower court ruling.
That enabled them to reverse that lower court ruling and to remove Trump from the ballot.
Quote, Section 3 encompasses, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment encompasses the office of the presidency and someone who has taken an oath as president.
On this point, the district court committed reversible error.
And then they went on to just affirm and accept every other finding of the district court since it was all against Trump.
The District Court did not abuse its discretion in admitting portions of the January 6th report into evidence at trial.
The District Court did not err in concluding that the events at the Capitol on January 6th constituted an insurrection.
The District Court did not err in concluding that President Trump, quote, engaged in that insurrection through his personal actions.
President Trump's speech inciting the crowd that breached the U.S.
Capitol on January 6th was not protected by the First Amendment.
I mean, this is a very dangerous ruling because of how much it erodes court free speech protections under the First Amendment to find that Trump's January 6th speech is outside the bounds of the Brandenburg Protection.
And that this two or three hour riot was an insurrection, an intended insurrection that Trump himself incited and instigated.
Despite not being charged with it, what would stop a Republican judge from going and taking all the members of Congress over the years, the Democratic members of Congress, who have objected to the certification of presidential elections, declaring them insurrectionists without any trial or criminal proceeding or due process, and ordering them removed from the ballot or from Congress on the grounds that the court finds they're insurrectionists?
Nothing!
Liberals in the United States really do see Trump as a Hitler figure.
And if you really see Trump as a Hitler figure, which I promise you they do, they talk themselves into that every day, even though he was president for four years, and didn't do the hallmark Hitlerian things like invading other countries for conquest, or setting up death camps for dissidents and minority groups, just little things like that that Trump didn't do over four years.
They still aren't convinced.
No, this time he's really going to be Hitler.
And if you believe that, and they do, they're not just pretending, they really believe that.
They believed this for a long time.
You are going to resort to things like this to keep Hitler out of power and to keep Biden in power because you believe that's the only way to save American democracy is if you override American democracy to do it.
This court ruling is, it's such a disgrace.
It is such a fraud.
Even three Democratic members of the court said that.
Here's what the court went on to say, quote, the Constitution delegates to states the authority to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding congressional elections, and states retain the power to regulate their own elections.
But does the U.S.
Constitution authorize states to assess the constitutional qualifications of presidential candidates?
We conclude that it does.
Now, there was a case back in 1868, Griffin's case, that actually decided this issue.
And they essentially decided in a way that would have precluded the court.
from removing Trump from the ballot.
And listen to what they do with the Supreme Court case from 1868 to get rid of it, just to say, we're not following it.
Quote, Griffin's case concludes that congressional action is needed before Section 3 disqualification attaches.
That's what that Supreme Court ruling said, that if someone is disqualified under the 14th Amendment, you need a congressional action to remove them.
That's what the Supreme Court said in 1868.
So this court says, but that one case does not persuade us of that point.
It's a Supreme Court case.
Trump and his allies assert that Griffin's case, quote, remains good law and has been repeatedly relied on.
Because the case is not binding on us, the fact that it has not been reversed is of no particular significance.
And the cases that cite it do so either with no analysis Yeah, it's a Supreme Court case.
We're not bound by it.
It's not a very good case.
Most cases don't even respect it that much.
So we don't care.
We're not going to follow that.
Then they say, quote, we do not place the same weight the district court did on the fact that the presidency is not specifically mentioned in section three.
It seems most likely that the presidency is not specifically included because it so evidently is an office.
Here's where they're saying why the lower court was wrong and the one thing she ruled in Trump's favor on.
Quote, we do not place the same weight that the district court did on the fact that the presidency is not specifically mentioned in Section 3.
It seems most likely that the presidency is not specifically included because it is so evidently in office.
Do you see how they're going out of their way to just throw away any argument that stands in the way of what they want to do?
Honestly, when I went to law school, I was very excited.
I was so passionate about the law.
And when I got out of law school, I worked at a very big Wall Street firm.
And I just thought I was going to go there for as long as I could stand it just to learn everything I could about the law.
It was a very good law firm filled with extremely smart people.
It was the law firm where George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband, was a partner.
A lot of other very well-connected people.
It was a very smart law firm.
They were defending Goldman Sachs and insurance companies.
I knew I didn't want to be doing that with my life.
So I wanted to go and absorb everything I could about the law and then start my own law firm, which I did and it grew.
And we represented a lot of people.
But the main reason why I grew tired of the law is because this is what judges do.
They just cheat all the time.
To get the outcome they want.
I saw it worked in my favor sometimes, it worked against me sometimes, but judges are a joke.
Not all of them, but many of them.
And you see them here just throwing away precedent that they don't want to deal with.
Trying to get around the fact that the 14th Amendment lists all these other offices, but doesn't list president and vice president.
And just ignoring the fact that even though Trump was never charged with being an insurrectionist, they have to claim he is one to get this ruling that they want.
Four Democratic judges from the Ivy League schools wanting to prevent the American people from a free choice in this election.
That's what this is.
Now let me show you quickly the core of two dissents, two dissenting judges.
Here is one of them.
Quote, dismissal, meaning dismissal of the entire case, is appropriate here because the electors brought their challenge without a determination from a proceeding, e.g.
a prosecution for an insurrection-related offense with more rigorous procedures to ensure adequate due process.
Now, this is the key.
This is why one of the dissenters, and really all of the dissenters agreed with this.
Said that this case had to be thrown out so obviously because it required the court to conclude that January 6th was an insurrection and that Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6th, even though it's done without a determination from a proceeding, meaning a prosecution, for an insurrection-related offense.
They don't have that.
They don't have a prosecution for an insurrection-related offense because Trump has not been accused of that.
Criminal process, if it had existed, would entail, quote, more rigorous procedures to ensure adequate due process.
That is so obvious.
If you charge Trump of being an insurrectionist, he has a whole litany of rights that he would be able to embrace and invoke, and then you'd have a jury trial, and you would have a finding of guilt or innocence.
We're not guilty or guilty.
They don't have that here.
So how can a court, without a trial, Determine that Trump is an insurrectionist just because MSNBC says he is one.
The dissent goes on, quote, instead the electors relied on a Colorado law and it's quote breakneck pace to declare President Trump a disqualified insurrectionist as President Trump argues And the plaintiffs do not contest.
The Colorado laws procedures do not provide common tools for complex fact finding.
They don't have preliminary evidentiary or pretrial motion hearings.
There's no subpoena powers.
There's no basic discovery.
There's no deposition.
There's no time for disclosure of witnesses and exhibits.
All the things that you would normally have in a trial to determine if Trump is an insurrectionist, you don't have in this process, which is what makes it so inappropriate for a Colorado state court or any other state court to try and claim that Trump is an insurrectionist.
Quote, this same concern was raised in Frazier.
A different case in Colorado.
The, quote, then secretary argued that it, quote, it is impossible to fully litigate a complex constitutional issue within days or weeks as is typical of a proceeding under this Colorado state law.
Here was the second dissent, quote, our government cannot deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law.
I just, this is so well stated.
And so obviously true that it is shocking to me, honestly.
I've seen a lot of bad court cases.
I've seen a lot of abuse of the judicial system.
We've been covering it over the last two years.
How is this not so obvious?
Like I said, you don't need to be a lawyer to see this.
Our government cannot deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law.
Even if we are convinced That a candidate committed horrible acts in the past, let's put this next screen on, even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past, dare I say engage in insurrection, there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office.
Procedural due process is one of the aspects of American democracy that sets this country apart.
The reality is liberals don't believe in due process.
They don't believe in due process.
The whole Me Too movement was about destroying people with no opportunity to be heard in court.
They frequently Vilify people as guilty of all sorts of things by mob justice or social media justice.
It's not surprising that they want to declare Donald Trump an insurrectionist without bothering charging him with that crime.
Even though due process is central to our entire constitutional framework, to the ability to ensure fairness, it is not a value liberals believe in.
They've proven that over and over, and that obviously includes liberal activist judges on the Colorado Supreme Court.
Here's the video of Trump, by the way, on January 6th when he was talking to the assembled protesters, his supporters.
And this is the only time he mentioned or spoke directly to the question of whether or not violence should be used when they go to the Capitol.
Here's what he said.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.
How should they prosecute?
How should they protest this way?
Over to the Capitol building.
To peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard, today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.
Does that sound like inciting violence?
Telling a gathered crowd to go march peacefully on the Capitol?
That was barely mentioned in the ruling.
But it would be if you had an actual criminal proceeding and you had due process.
Here it was while Professor Jonathan Turley, back in August, I believe, addressing the possibility that Trump could be disqualified on this theory, the disqualification of Donald Trump and other legal urban legends.
And this is what Turley said about the case brought by Jack Smith, the criminal case, quote, Not only did Jack Smith not charge Trump with any such crime, meaning insurrection, but there was little evidence that even the most radical defendants charged were planning to overthrow the nation's government or were part of a broader conspiracy.
That leaves us with the argument that any effort to stop a constitutional process is akin to an insurrection or rebellion under the 14th Amendment.
If that were the standard, then any protests, including the anti-Trump protests and the certification challenges to electoral votes in 2016, or for that matter 2004 and 2000, could also be cited as disqualifying to run for office.
If that were the case, figures such as Congressman Jamie Raskin could be summarily purged from office for having sought to overturn an election.
We would be left on a slippery slope as partisan judges and members would seek to block opposing candidates from ballots, all supposedly in the name of protecting democracy.
Now one of the articles I thought was most interesting was one written by the former congressman Peter Meijer.
You remember him?
He was A Republican from Illinois, I believe he only served one term, maybe two terms in office as part of the Republican Party, and he prided himself on being a moderate.
He hates Trump.
He hates him.
He was only one of ten House Republicans, as he says in this article, to vote for Trump's impeachment because of January 6th.
He joined Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in that crowd.
And he didn't even end up running for re-election because most of the people who voted to impeach Trump lost in the primary.
But he really hates Trump, and he hasn't stopped hating him.
He's been condemning him since he left Congress.
And yet, today he wrote in the Free Press this article, quote, Colorado undermines democracy in the name of democracy.
I was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6.
I think the court's decision is shameful.
And this is what he wrote, quote, for years we've been told that Donald Trump is a worse than Hitler threat to democracy and that those who opposed him, leading Democrats, the courts, Noam Chomsky, Michael Avenatti, Rachel Maddow, the host of The View, even old Twitter, were just trying to protect our democracy.
It's odd then to now be told that the best way to save democracy is by banning Trump from the ballot.
January 6th is my third day in Congress.
So yeah, he only served one term.
I had to be evacuated from the House chamber after a violent mob stormed the Capitol that day.
I considered it then and consider it now a dark and shameful day.
But no federal court has found, nor is Justice Department even alleging, that Trump is guilty of anything close to insurrection or rebellion.
And yet here is the highest court in an American state taking upon itself to conclude a violation of federal statute.
I mean, this is the point and everyone can see it.
But Democrats don't care.
I mean, they are seeing the same polls we're seeing.
They see Biden collapsing.
He was already in so much political trouble.
And now you have a large part of the Democratic base, young voters, Muslims in Michigan, Saying they will never vote for Biden.
Now some of them are probably going to get coerced and propagandized and manipulated by an avalanche of propaganda saying Trump is Hitler into changing their minds and voting for Biden.
But a lot of them are going to stay home.
I can tell you that for sure.
People who feel strongly about Biden's decision to fund Israel's war in Gaza, to provide the bombs, to stand by Israel, to isolate the U.S.
at the U.N., to block a ceasefire resolution by having the U.S.
use its veto to protect Israel.
A lot of people who voted for Biden in 2020 feel very strongly against this war, very strongly.
And they're shocked to see Biden Going out of his way to do everything to protect Israel, even though Biden's entire career he's been one of the most pro-Israel politicians in Washington.
So he's in a lot of trouble politically.
A lot of trouble politically.
And amazingly, and this is the oxymoron, this is the paradox of American political life, as the New York Times today says, quote, Trump's legal jeopardy hasn't hurt his GOP support, Times-Siena poll finds, but it really hasn't hurt his support in general.
We showed you at the top of the show he's leading Biden in swing states, all seven of which Biden won in 2020.
Quote, more than 60% of Republicans think that if the former president wins the primary, he should remain the party's nominee, even if he is subsequently convicted of a federal crime.
Voters in the poll were also equally split 47 to 47% over whether Mr. Trump genuinely believed the election has been stolen or knowingly made false claims.
And again, more than 80% of both Republicans and Democrats sided with their political tribes.
Perhaps as a result, the array of charges against Mr. Trump so far do not appear to be helping Mr. Biden politically.
Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden 46 to 44% among registered voters.
I think Democrats have so overplayed their hand out of desperation and panic.
They are engaging in such blatantly authoritarian policies.
I mean, here you see the Republican polls, the nominee, if we could put this on the screen, Trump had 54% of Republican voters.
Can we put this graph on the screen?
Trump had 54% of Republican voters in July, and now it's gone up to 64%.
So the more he's indicted, the more Democrats abuse their power and the justice system, the more support Trump seems to attract.
And I really believe that American citizens are going to resent Being told that they don't even have the option to defeat Trump at the ballot box.
That they're not even allowed to vote for Trump.
They all watched January 6th.
They all watched what Trump did.
And the polls show that they don't believe he really committed serious crimes.
Or their faith in the justice system is so low.
That they don't care that he's accused of crimes because they don't trust the process.
They don't trust institutions of authority inside the United States and nor should they.
And this decision by four Democratic Party judges, we'll see what the Supreme Court does with it, but four Democratic Party judges, all from Ivy League schools on the East Coast, Who under the most precarious and flawed legal ruling that is evident to anybody, a basic due process objection, telling Americans that they're not even allowed to vote for Trump, I think is going to engender even more resentment still.
And all these arguments that Democrats think they can win on, that Trump is a grave threat to democracy, are very, very difficult to maintain.
While they advocate censorship, while they try and imprison Joe Biden's primary opponent, and while they try and even deny Americans the right to vote for Donald Trump if they want to.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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