America's Talking - U.S. Supreme Court Justices Challenge Colorado’s Actions to Keep Trump off Ballot

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

All nine U.S. Supreme Court justices challenged constitutional arguments for removing former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential primary ballot during arguments before the court on Thursday. During arguments scheduled to last 80 minutes, the justices spent almost 130 minutes listening to and questioning three attorneys: Jonathan Mitchell representing Trump, Jason Murray representing six Colorado Republicans who filed suit last year to remove the former president from the ballot, and Shannon Stevenson representing the Colorado secretary of state. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, February 9th.

Casey, a federal appeals court this week ruled that former President Donald Trump does not have presidential immunity that would protect him from criminal charges of election interference related to his contesting the 2020 election and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump is expected to appeal a decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Separately, Supreme Court justices heard arguments in a case out of Colorado, where the state is attempting to keep Trump off the 2024 primary ballot because of the charges related to the 2020 election. That combined with a stunning report from the special counsel about President Joe Biden's mental capacity, and the baffling missteps in Congress made this for quite a week, Casey.

But let's stick with Trump. The Trump updates in court. Let's start with the Colorado case. While there is no decision made by Supreme Court justices in that questioning of both sides makes it feel like they're leaning towards keeping Trump on the ballot. Yeah, I mean, this always happens when something goes to the Supreme Court and you hear the arguments, you hear the questions that the justices are asking. And you can try to parse out based on their questions, based on their tone of voice, how they feel about this particular case. Now, there is a little bit of guesswork in that. There's a little bit of assumptions. And Supreme Court justices, in my opinion, and from covering them, they ask very difficult,

very tough questions to get to the root of the matter, regardless of how they end up ruling. But with that being said, it did seem a trend in these arguments and the questioning from the justices that they were skeptical of this effort to get Trump off the ballot. of course, a little refresher, and our listeners probably know, but across the countries, you know, there have been efforts within various states to say that because Trump was involved in January 6th, he's disqualified under the 14th Amendment from running for office. The 14th Amendment included a provision that basically ensured that Confederate leaders and Confederate generals could not somehow run for president and take over the country after

the Civil War by election, right? So there was a fear at the time that some popular Confederate leader could get enough political support to, you know, win the civil war by election, right? And so there's provision in the 14th Amendment. Now it's being applied to Trump and saying he engaged in an insurrection and he's therefore disqualified. We've seen it in Colorado. There was efforts in other states where, you know, court, some courts said, no, you can't do that. They struck it down. Others, as in Colorado, for instance, have said, yes, but it's been appealed up to the Supreme Court. It's very likely that, however, the court, Supreme Court rules on this will be the nationwide precedent, of course. So if the

Supreme Court says you can't kick him off the ballot, I think will essentially put this issue to rest across all the states. But if the Supreme Court says you do have a point here and Colorado is justified in trying to kick Trump off the ballot, I think you'll see almost all 50 states there will be efforts to remove Trump because that's the nature of American politics today. So it's a really important case. But the justices seemed skeptical. They asked tough questions. And so it'll be interesting to follow Dan. Of course, we won't know for sure until the court rules, but they do have a real motivation to rule quickly on this because there are primaries coming up. The election is in November. So they do have to release a ruling very quickly on this vote. It would be a pretty

incredible precedent for the courts to be able to kick a candidate off the ballot. And I think it's important to note, too, here. Of course, there's a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning more justice is appointed by Republican president. but even the liberal justices seem skeptical of the efforts to keep Trump off the bout in Colorado, Casey. So, I mean, this very well could be, just speculating here, could be a unanimous decision by the court. Right. And Trump hasn't been convicted, just to interject. He has not been convicted of this. And I think that's the best thing he has going for him. Because if you say he engaged in an insurrection, it's kind of like, that's your opinion. A fact-finding court of law has not convicted him of that. So I think that's probably the best thing he has going for him in this case.

So let's move on to the second court appearance for Trump, or a court case involving Trump or a federal appeals court. Essentially dealt Trump's defense a major blow on Tuesday of this week when it said he doesn't have presidential immunity to protect him from charges of election interference regarding his challenging of the 2020 election and the January 6th storming of the Capitol. Of course, Trump will probably appeal this to the Supreme Court. Does this have any meaning right now or do we have to wait until it gets to the Supreme Court? I mean, it does have meaning because it will take more for the Supreme Court to overturn this decision. But ultimately, once again, it will be in the Supreme Court's hands, whether the President has immunity. I think Trump's chances in this case are not nearly as good as the Colorado case, but of course we'll have to see. One of the problems with all these things that are so political going to the Supreme Court, Dan,

is it actually hurts the credibility of the court to be constantly deciding highly political cases. It puts a bad taste in people's mouth. You mean, you go back to something like the Bush Gore decision to end the election. I mean, a lot of people that lowered their view of the Supreme Court. And there's been other cases like this. We've just talked about the one kicking Trump off the ballot. So I think it's not good for the court to have to rule on these cases. Now, essentially, the Democrat argument on this is that no one is above the law of the U.S.

And really, Western civilization has a long history of leaders not being above the law. But Trump's argument has been that if a president, is worried about being charged for a crime for something that has to do with, you know, how he does his job, not like he, you know, shot someone in the street or, you know, stole a sports car or something. You know, these are things that he did as part of his, you know, executive office. If a president's worried about that, he's never going to be able to do his job. And, you know, Trump and his supporters have thrown out examples like if a president, you know, orders some kind of assassination, could he be charged with murder?

If the president orders, could the president be charged for murder for some kind of military? effort, right? There's a lot of things that the president does and his daily job that the average American just doesn't have the power to and doesn't have, you know, it doesn't always neatly fit into the American legal system. And so that's his argument. I do think it would set a major precedent that could be problematic. And it would open up a whole can of worms about how presidents make decisions and could they have broken the law in maybe their foreign policy or how they did something. So I think there's something to the can of worms argument, but that doesn't mean that, you know, Trump isn't guilty and the court will just have to decide on that.

Of course, there will be plenty of more developments in both of these cases, Casey, and listeners can follow those updates at thecentersquare.com, but we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McCaleb. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Knowledge is power, and you deserve to know what happens in your state government. That's why the Center Square's reporting zeros in on state authorities, publishing stories that show where your money goes and who spends it. The Center Square gives power to the taxpayer by tracking politicians' use of the people's money and demanding transparency from state-run agencies. This is how the Center Square equips you, the American taxpayer, to hold your state government,

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