‘Nuclear’ Level Crisis: Colorado GOP Chief Denounces Supreme Court Ruling Blocking Trump From Ballot

Former President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa, on Dec. 19, 2023. Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

The chairman of the Colorado GOP called the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to exclude former President Donald Trump from the presidential primary ballot in the state a “nuclear” level constitutional crisis.

“On a scale of 1-to-10, this is past 10. This is nuclear,” the Colorado Republican Party chief Dave Williams told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Williams called the decision “uncharted territory,” comparing it to the Civil War period in U.S. history between 1861 and 1865, when the Constitution was being rewritten by the exigencies of a bitterly fought war.

“You can’t say we have free and fair elections, but then have the government decide who’s a viable candidate or not,” added Mr. Williams. “I mean, that’s not the role of the government. That’s what dictators do. That’s what banana republics do.”

What’s Next for Trump in Colorado?

In the wake of the court ruling, the Colorado GOP said that should the decision stand, the party would revert back to a caucus system.

Caucuses are where Party members meet in local neighborhoods to vote on delegates to a state convention, who in turn compete to go to the national convention, where the delegates will vote to support candidates as the nominee for the presidency.

But before it gets that far, the Colorado GOP will file with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision by the state’s high court, Mr. Williams said.

“Our first plan is to appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court,” said Mr. Williams. “We are parties in the case. We intervened early on and we have the right to go to the United States Supreme Court, and that’s what we’re going to do first and foremost.”

Mr. William said that concurrent with the appeal to the Supreme Court, the state party will approach the Republican National Committee about a plan to select delegates or nominees via caucus process as opposed to the primary.

“I don’t have an exact timeline for you because this is all very fresh, but I suspect in the next week or two, having to navigate the holidays of course, we'll have a better handle on how we’re going to proceed forward,” said Mr. Williams.

The Colorado GOP chair then added, “But we’re definitely not going to let four unelected Democrat judges dictate to the Republican Party who an acceptable candidate is or is not.”

‘Totally Partisan and Totally Kangaroo Court’

One local Republican party official said that he believed that Colorado’s Democrat Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who is a party to the lawsuit, was responsible for the adverse decision keeping President Trump off the ballot.

“She’s definitely running for governor,” said Peter Boddie, a GOP area coordinator for District 28 in Littleton. “Secretary of State should not be a partisan position. I mean, you could be part of a party but with Secretary of State politics should not apply.”

Mr. Boddie pointed to some of Ms. Griswold’s Twitter posts that are anti-Trump and advocate for President Trump to be barred from office, while Ms. Griswold claimed in court, acting as secretary of state, that she is non-partisan.

“It was totally partisan and totally kangaroo court,” Mr. Boddie said of the 4–3 decision to exclude President Trump from the ballot.

Mr. Williams didn’t venture an opinion on Ms. Griswold, but did accuse the Democrats of shopping for a legal avenue that would be friendly to Democrats on the President Trump ballot access issue.

“They shopped courts around the country and landed on Colorado because the threshold to get into court was so low and because the appointees were all Democrats,” Williams said. “They knew exactly what they were doing.”

Mr. Williams, a former state lawmaker, noted that the filers of the lawsuit lacked standing for filing in federal court.

“Federal Court wouldn’t have granted them standing as petitioners. They admitted this in oral arguments,” said Mr. Williams.

The Epoch Times reached out to Ms. Griswold for comment.

Trump Still on Ballot, For Now

As for other remedies, Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen said that he’ll have a better idea of what legislative cures he can introduce once the U.S. Supreme Court issues a ruling.

“We don’t really know exactly what’s going on,” Mr. Lundeen told The Epoch Times. “So I‘d say it’s premature today. But this is a fast-moving case. In a few weeks, we’ll know what’s up and we’ll have a conversation about what needs to be done to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.”

Still, he condemned the ruling as “outrageous.”

“The court even acknowledged that by virtue of the way they put their stay on the decision,” said Mr. Lundeen.

While the media headlines trumpet President Trump’s exclusion from the ballot, that’s not quite true, yet, he added.

Page 9 of the Colorado Supreme Court decision notes that the Colorado “Secretary [of State] will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, until the receipt of any order or mandate from the Supreme Court.”

Mr. Lundeen said he felt Colorado’s high court inherently acknowledged the challenges of what they are doing in excluding President Trump from the ballot by putting an immediate stay of their own decision to provide enough time for it to actually get to the U.S. Supreme Court.