Former Attorney General Bill Barr said that the U.S. Supreme Court should strike down a ruling issued by the Colorado Supreme Court that barred former President Donald Trump from the state ballot.
Last week, a majority of judges on Colorado’s high court said that the former president is ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot. Some analysts said that it’s likely that the former president would appeal the decision to the high court.
The U.S. Supreme Court “has to smack this down very quickly,” Mr. Barr told Fox News last week, responding to the decision.
And Mr. Barr—who served in the Trump administration but has become a frequent critic of President Trump after leaving office and has disputed claims about 2020 election fraud—added that “the legal argument here for it is ridiculous.”
“Even more importantly, it is highly destructive, and it’s exactly the kind of tactics by the left that created Donald Trump in the first place,” he said.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. It overturned a ruling from a district court that said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4–3 decision. The dissenting justices argued that the ruling violated the former president’s due process rights.
The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the court’s majority wrote. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
Other state high courts have rejected similar arguments lodged by left-wing groups claiming that President Trump cannot appear on ballots due to the insurrection clause. Although the former president has been charged with crimes in several jurisdictions in the past year, he has not been charged with or convicted of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.
In a statement last week, Trump legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said that “this ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”
Other than Mr. Barr, a number of legal experts and even some Democratic officials have disputed the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment-based attempts to block the former president from running.
The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who argued that President Trump should be disqualified because, according to the group, he was trying to obstruct the transfer of presidential power to President Biden after the 2020 election on Jan. 6.
