Former President Donald Trump said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will “intervene” in multiple cases to prevent him from appearing on state ballots, forecasting that the three justices he nominated to the high court will rule in his favor.
Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday evening, the former president said that the justices are “not going to take the vote away from the people” because of “three great justices” and “other great justices up there.” During his term in office, President Trump nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
“I’m sure the Supreme Court is going to say, ‘We’re not going to take the vote away from the people,’” he continued to say, saying that Democrats are the real “threat to democracy” in the United States.
Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a 4–3 decision to prevent the former president from appearing on state ballots, citing their interpretation of the “insurrection” clause of the Constitution’s 14th amendment. They claimed that they believed President Trump engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. government despite him having not been convicted or charged with the crime in any court.
Days later, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, issued a unilateral decision to bar the former president from that state’s ballots under similar pretexts. Unlike Colorado, which is expected to lean heavily Democratic in the 2024 election, Maine could be considered a battleground state, and President Trump won one of the state’s four electors during the 2020 contest.
“But I don’t think the Supreme Court would [agree with decisions to keep him from ballots] because you can’t take the vote,“ the former commander-in-chief added to Mr. Hannity. ”You know, I’m leading in every poll ... I’m leading the remaining Republicans … they’re barely hanging on. How can you possibly take the vote away?”
In a Truth Social post earlier on Thursday, President Trump said he hoped that it would be “an easy decision” for the Supreme Court. “God bless the Supreme Court,” he added.
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This week, more than 170 congressional Republicans—including some of its leadership—filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, arguing to keep President Trump on the 2024 ballots.“Disqualification under Section 3 is an extraordinarily harsh result, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s own text confirms that Congress, representing the Nation’s various interests and constituencies, is the best judge of when to authorize Section 3’s affirmative enforcement,” the lawmakers wrote in their brief.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, they added, “will only supercharge state officials to conjure bases for labeling political opponents as having engaged in insurrection.“ What’s more, the nine justices should overturn that ruling to reduce the ”partisan incentive“ to remove political opponents from ballots under the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, or ”insurrectionist ban,” according to the lawmakers.
Also this week, a Maine Superior Court judge concluded she lacked authority to stay the judicial proceedings but she wrote that she did have authority to send the case back to the secretary of state with instructions to await the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court case before withdrawing, modifying or upholding her original decision.
In the decision, the judge said that the issues raised in the Maine case mirror the issues raised in the Colorado case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She wrote that her decision “minimizes any potentially destabilizing effect of inconsistent decisions and will promote greater predictability in the weeks ahead of the primary election.”
Days before that, in Oregon, the state Supreme Court issued a statement saying that it would not rule on a ballot-related challenge against President Trump “for now” until the U.S. high court renders its decision.
A number of other federal and state judges in different jurisdictions have also rejected similar ballot-related lawsuits seeking to bar the former president from appearing on the ballots.
The nation’s highest court has never ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some left-wing legal scholars and activists say the post-Civil War clause applies to President Trump, while some have noted that he was never charged with those crimes.
In California, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement last month rejecting a push to bar the former president from his state’s ballots in 2024, writing that in the Golden State, “we defeat candidates at the polls.” He added, “Everything else is a political distraction.”
