The Colorado Supreme Court ruling is front and center right now for it having disqualified Trump from the ballot.
The court ruled 4-3, which is important, especially since Democrat governors appointed all three dissenting justices. And all three issued fiery dissenting opinions, calling out their fellow justices for an unprecedented ruling.
The majority opinion and all three dissenting opinions are worth reading when you have time (click here to read them all), but we want to focus on the dissenting opinion of Justice Carlos Samour, whom former Democrat Governor John Hickenlooper appointed. Samour wrote:
"The decision to bar former President Donald J. Trump — by all accounts the current leading Republican presidential candidate (and reportedly the current leading overall presidential candidate) — from Colorado's presidential primary ballot flies in the face of the due process doctrine.
"Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past — dare I say, engaged in insurrection — there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office."
His dissent went on to say that states going down this path "risked chaos in the country," as well as adding, "This can't possibly be the outcome the framers intended."
As we expected, the Trump campaign had a response to the ballot ruling in Colorado fired and ready to go, with campaign spokesman Steven Cheung stating:
"The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision.
"We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits."
As Cheung noted, the campaign will be filing an appeal with the Supreme Court of the United States, and we would expect that case to be expedited by the court. We would also note that the Colorado Supreme Court stayed its decision until January to allow the appeals process to play out.
I have read a lot of opinions on this from both partisan and non-partisan legal experts. Of course, those who have aligned themselves with Democrats believe the ruling was correct, and if the Supreme Court rules against it, they have lost all credibility.
From the non-partisan experts, even from those who personally believe Trump incited the insurrection, note that he has never been fully charged or convicted of such, echoing the dissent of Justice Samour, and that due process must be permitted to play out (even though the 14th Amendment, Section III does not call for an actual conviction).
If due process is not permitted to play out, we are basically saying it is okay for someone to accuse a candidate of insurrection to disqualify them from the government. If that is the case, do we go back to the George Floyd rioting and disqualify Kamala Harris for her comments? Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)? Both of whom made comments supporting the rioting at the time, and that list is much longer than just those two. An insurrection is defined as a revolt against authority, so the attacks against police officers and damage to police stations would fit that stipulation, would it not?
Samour got something very right in his opinion, stating that utter chaos could erupt by going down this path, and the argument can be made that this is exactly what Democrats were hoping for when they labeled the riot at the Capitol an insurrection and started trying to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot.
This will all be settled by the Supreme Court soon enough, but anything less than a 9-0 ruling will surely result in more chaos and unrest in this country.
