Trump Seeks Stay in Dispute Over Maine Ballot Pending Supreme Court Ruling

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Jan. 5, 2024. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has asked the Maine Superior Court to place his primary ballot disqualification appeal on hold as the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether he’s legally qualified to be president.

“In many ways, the current litigation is wholly unnecessary, unless President Trump is unsuccessful on all issues raised in the U.S. Supreme Court,” his attorneys wrote in their Jan. 8 motion to stay the case.

On Feb. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the former president’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s Dec. 19, 2023, decision to disqualify him from that state’s presidential primary ballot.

That case, President Trump’s legal team noted, is based on the same underlying claim that he’s ineligible for the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, commonly referred to as the “insurrection clause.”

Both the Colorado court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, argue that the 45th president engaged in an “insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and is thus disqualified from holding presidential office.

Should the U.S. Supreme Court side with President Trump in Colorado, his Maine appeal “will also be rendered moot,” his attorneys said.

The motion also disclosed that Ms. Bellows had agreed to a stay pending the high court’s decision in discussions with President Trump’s attorneys.

Ms. Bellows previously stayed her ruling pending appeal, so President Trump’s name is still slated to appear on Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Noting this, his attorneys said a stay would harm neither party in the case.

“And if the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejects President Trump’s challenges, this Court—and the Maine Law Court—will have ample time to resolve the remaining issues prior to this summer’s Republican Party National Convention and the November 2024 general election,” the motion reads.

‘Multiple Errors of Law’

In their initial complaint, the former president’s attorneys charged that the secretary of state made “multiple errors of law.” They argued that the Capitol breach didn’t amount to an insurrection and that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to the presidency.

Specifically, the law disqualifies those who took an oath of office “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State” and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from membership in Congress or the Electoral College or holding any federal or state office, “civil or military.”

Notably, President Trump hasn’t been convicted or even formally accused of insurrection under the 14th Amendment—a fact that both Republicans and Democrats have pointed out in criticism of Ms. Bellows’s decision.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) was among those who panned the ruling as unjustified.

“I do not believe [Trump] should be re-elected as President of the United States,” Mr. Golden said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“However, we are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.”

Republicans—including the former president’s campaign—have charged that politics are driving the push to keep him off the ballot.

“Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally [sic] suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”

Before Ms. Bellows’s ruling, President Trump’s attorneys accused her of harboring political bias against him, citing her prior public statements about Jan. 6, 2021, as grounds for her recusal.

Specifically, they pointed to the Democrat’s X posts from Feb. 13, 2021, the date the Senate acquitted President Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.

“The Jan 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election,” Ms. Bellows wrote in one post. “Today 57 Senators including [Angus] King & [Susan] Collins found Trump guilty. That’s short of impeachment but nevertheless an indictment. The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.”

In a subsequent post, she wrote: “Not saying not disappointed. He should have been impeached. But history will not treat him or those who voted against impeachment kindly.”

And then on Jan. 6, 2022, she reiterated her belief that the Capitol breach was a “violent insurrection.”

In their motion to stay, President Trump’s attorneys said those comments exhibited Ms. Bellows’s “clear animosity and bias” against the former president.

Ms. Bellows has denied that politics played any role in her decision-making.

“Politics and my personal views played no role,” she said in a Jan. 1 interview with NPR. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that is what I did.”

Tom Ozimek and Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.