The court ruling kicking Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential election ballot in Colorado is likely to head to a U.S. Supreme Court pushed hard to the right by the former president with his appointees.
But at a time when scandals have pushed the highest court’s legitimacy into question, former CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin believes there is a legal argument that SCOTUS could use to put Trump back on the ballot “without embarrassing themselves.”
In a conversation with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Toobin analyzed the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that disqualified Trump from being on the ballot for violating Section 3 of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That section, originally created after the Civil War to prevent the leaders of the Confederacy from running for federal office, disqualifies those who “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.
In a 4-3 ruling, the state court declared that Trump’s involvement in inciting his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was grounds for declaring a violation of Section 3. But Toobin believes that an “intellectually respectable” way for SCOTUS to overturn that ruling is on the argument that Trump was not given “adequate due process” to defend himself.
“He was not given adequate opportunity to prove that he did not engage in [the insurrection]. The trial was too brief, he was not allowed to subpoena witnesses, he was not allowed to take depositions. That is a way 0f getting rid of the case without too embarrassing themselves,” he said.
Hayes acknowledged that such a ruling would be a more sound argument than the one made by five conservative SCOTUS justices in the landmark Bush v. Gore case in 2000 that denied Al Gore the right to a recount of votes in Florida, handing George W. Bush the presidential election. The host even called the Colorado case “Bush v. Gore 2.0.”
NYU law professor Melissa Murray also noted that the dissenting opinion in the Colorado case “laid the seeds” for the potential ruling Toobin suggested, saying that those judges “were reluctant to disqualify someone in the absence of a criminal conviction for insurrection.”
The Supreme Court will have to hand down a ruling quickly, as the deadline for ballot entry in Colorado is Jan. 5. But even if SCOTUS puts Trump back on the ballot in Colorado, Toobin notes that the Republican frontrunner isn’t out of the woods yet as he is still facing criminal indictments in several states.
“If he’s convicted for a first time, then you will see other states come back to this issue, and there will be an even better case [for disqualifying Trump] because he will have had due process. What is better due process than a criminal trial?” he said.
Watch the clip from “All In With Chris Hayes” above.
