A court in Denver (Colorado) on Friday rejected a request to exclude Donald Trump from the ballots in the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential election in this western American state.
The historic indictment of the former president (at the federal level on August 1 and then by the state of Georgia on August 14), for his allegedly illicit attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, opened a legal debate on its possible ineligibility, leading to appeals in several States.
In her ruling, Judge Sarah Wallace ordered Colorado election officials “to place Donald J. Trump on the ballot in the 2024 Republican primary.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign team welcomed the decision, saying it represented “another nail in the coffin of anti-American ballot challenges.”
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The petitioners, an anti-corruption citizen group called the “Crew,” accused the former president of “inciting a violent mob” of hundreds of his supporters to storm the Capitol, the seat of Congress, on January 6, 2021, in order to to prevent the certification of the victory of his Democratic opponent, current President Joe Biden.
The group of citizens invoked the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868. This amendment provides for the exclusion from public responsibilities of any person who, after taking an oath to defend the Constitution, engages in acts of “rebellion.”
This text, aimed at the time at supporters of the Southern Confederacy defeated during the Civil War (1861-1865), was invoked at least eight times throughout American history, according to Crew.
