Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner told Newsweek on Wednesday that there’s a possibility of a “horrific ruling” by the U.S. Supreme Court that could allow former President Donald Trump to appear on Colorado’s 2024 ballot.
The legal analyst and staunch Trump critic told Newsweek in a phone interview on Wednesday that he’s not confident the U.S. Supreme Court will “disqualify” Trump from the state’s ballot if the high court decides to hear the case.
Trump, front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, last week was ruled ineligible to appear on Republican primary ballots in Colorado following a 4-3 ruling from the state’s Supreme Court. The justices ruled in favor of petitioners who argued that the MAGA leader’s actions surrounding the January 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol disqualified him from holding elected office based on a Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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Section 3 of the 14th Amendment mandates that officials who take an oath to support the Constitution be banned from office in the future if they engage in “insurrection.” The clause, which was drafted initially to keep former Confederates out of office after the Civil War, has been cited in numerous Trump ballot challenges. The Colorado effort is the first one to be successful, and Kirschner told Newsweek that it doesn’t mean other efforts will also succeed due to varying state laws and constitutions, saying that it will ultimately depend on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
Trump’s team vowed to appeal the Colorado Supreme Court ruling to the federal high court, and given that bench’s conservative tilt, the state ruling has the possibility of being overturned.
Trump faces 91 felony charges spread across four criminal indictments, two of which are federal, in addition to several civil cases. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has said repeatedly that the charges are part of a political “witch hunt” against him as he campaigns for reelection to the White House.
Newsweek reached out via email on Wednesday to Trump’s representatives for comment.
Kirschner, a legal analyst for MSNBC, discussed the former president’s various legal woes with Newsweek on Wednesday.
The former assistant U.S. attorney said he thinks that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to hear Trump’s appeal on the Colorado ballot ruling, which, he added, might not be a good thing for critics of the former president who are leading efforts to strike him from state primary ballots.
While Kirschner said it is possible that the U.S. Supreme Court justices can accept the findings of the Colorado courts that Trump engaged in an insurrection and uphold the state ruling, he added that he wasn’t confident in that scenario.
“I’m not all that bullish on the Supreme Court disqualifying him,” Kirschner told Newsweek. “I think they can find lots of ways to weasel their way through the words that do and do not appear in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and come up with what I think will be a horrific ruling, which is that everyone else in government who takes an oath would be disqualified from public office, except the president of the United States who launches an attack against his own government. But I’m not all that confident in the Supreme Court making the right decision for the right reasons.”
Kirschner said it’s possible for the Colorado ruling to ignite a “ripple effect” with other states barring Trump from their ballots; however, the attorney noted, each secretary of state will determine candidates’ eligibility based on their state’s laws.
“After the Supreme Court in Colorado affirmed that factual finding and ruled that he is disqualified from the ballot, if I were a secretary of state in another state, and I had the responsibility of deciding whether to place somebody on the ballot or disqualify them from the ballot, I would be inclined to follow the Constitution and that Colorado ruling would weigh very heavily on me,” he told Newsweek. “So, I do think there’s a chance that there will be a ripple effect.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.