Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr slammed the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling this week that former President Donald Trump was ineligible to be on the presidential primary ballot next year because of his actions on January 6, 2021, as they relate to the 14th Amendment.
The 4-3 ruling will be placed on hold pending appeal until January 4, the Court said in its ruling.
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the ruling said. “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.”
Barr appeared on CNN’s “The Lead” with host Jake Tapper on Wednesday to give his analysis of the situation.
“As you know, I strongly oppose Donald Trump for the Republican nomination,” Barr said. “But I think this case is legally wrong and untenable. I think this kind of action of stretching the law, taking these hyper-aggressive positions to try to knock Trump out of the race are counterproductive. They backfire. As you know, he feeds on grievance, just like a fire feeds on oxygen. This is going to end up as a grievance that helps him.”
Barr said that he disagreed with the court’s ability to make the findings in their ruling because they were denying the former president due process.
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“The core problem here is the denial of due process, to deprive somebody of the right to hold public office requires due process,” he said. “It requires an adjudication of two core issues. One, was there an insurrection? Did the public disturbance rise to the level of an insurrection? And second, what was the role of the individual there? Was it engagement? Did they do something to break their oath of office?”
“Those are complicated facts and this was denied due process,” he said. “It was a five-day hearing. There was no jury, it was before the judge. They were not able to subpoena witnesses and compel the attendance of witnesses. They relied on the hearings, the January 6 Committee hearings, which is mostly hearsay. There was no right to cross examine during those hearings and so forth.”
Barr said that if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear the case that “they’re going to slap it down very quickly, and I hope they do take it up quickly and slap it down, because otherwise, he could be left off the ballot in this primary.”
“Denial of due process is fatal here,” he said. “But as you’ve alluded to in your opening comments, the 14th Amendment is not something that can be applied willy-nilly by the states through sort of ad hoc proceedings. It was contemplated the federal government set up the enforcement mechanism. So, you have some standard, you know, what is the proof that’s required? What’s the procedure that’s required? And hopefully, some calibration of what exactly the insurrection is.”
Barr noted that while special counsel Jack Smith has charged the former president with numerous felonies, none of those charges involve insurrection or incitement.