A judge in Colorado has rejected a challenge filed by a Left-leaning group to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot under the 14th Amendment.
On Friday, Colorado Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Trump could not be kicked off the ballot in the state because the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the presidency. The challenge in Colorado was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of six Colorado voters.
“Part of the court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section 3,” Wallace wrote. The ruling comes after similar efforts to block Trump from appearing on state ballots failed in Michigan and Minnesota.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that the ruling was another nail in the coffin for the efforts to make Trump ineligible to run for office.
“We applaud today’s ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges,” Cheung said. “These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats who know Crooked Joe Biden is a failed president on the fast track to defeat.”
Wallace did rule that the Capitol riot was an “insurrection” and claimed that Trump meant to “incite political violence.”
“Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification,” Wallace wrote. “Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same.”
Mario Nicolais, a lawyer for the group who challenged Trump’s eligibility, said that the group planned on appealing.
“The court found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection after a careful and thorough review of the evidence,” Nicolais said. “We are very pleased with the opinion and look forward to addressing the sole legal issue on appeal, namely whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to insurrectionist presidents. We believe that it does.”
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Trump, currently the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has risen above President Joe Biden in polling from recent crucial swing states.
The ruling from Wallace came the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he would be making footage from January 6 publicly available for everyone to view.
Much of the footage that was previously made available focused on protester clashes with police while widely shared footage from Friday’s drop showed people walking down a hallway past law enforcement in an orderly fashion and even waving to officers.