Advocates urge disqualification of Trump from 2024 ballot over January 6 riot

At the start of a trial on Monday, an advocacy group attorney argued that Donald Trump ought to be barred from Colorado’s ballot in the following year’s election due to his having “incited a violent mob” in Washington on January 6, 2021.

A Washington-based lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics is a test case to determine whether the U.S. Constitution’s rarely invoked Civil War-era provision prohibiting individuals who have participated in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding federal office can stop Trump from becoming president once more.

“Trump incited a violent mob to attack our Capitol, to stop the peaceful transition of power,” said Eric Olson, an advocate group’s lawyer and representative of voters, during the trial’s opening remarks, which took place during a week in Colorado District Court.

Prior to the unrest on January 6, the then-president Trump spent weeks disseminating unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud in the wake of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2020 election and urging his followers to demonstrate in Washington. Following that, he exhorted them to march on the US Capitol, where Congress was formally announcing Biden’s victory. He didn’t ask the rioters to leave until after hours of violence.

Scott Gesler, a Trump attorney, refuted claims that the candidate incited violence among his followers and stated that it would be dangerous to remove him from office on the basis of “legal theories that have never been embraced by a state or federal court.”

In his opening statement, Gesler told the court, “People should be able to run for office and shouldn’t be punished for their speech.”

Nonpartisan election observers believe that Colorado is safely Democratic, so President Biden is predicted to win the state even if Trump is not on the ballot.

Trump’s opponents are putting their plan to prevent him from being on state ballots to the test. Similar lawsuits filed against Trump in Michigan and Minnesota are from advocacy groups. The first case to go to trial is the Colorado one.

The crowd at the Capitol reacted in real time to Trump’s tweets and became more violent, according to testimony given on Monday by Danny Hodges, an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department who was hurt during the attack.

According to Hodges, the throng began “punching, kicking, and pushing” him before dousing him in pepper spray and stomping him beneath a police shield.

Opinion polls indicate that Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in what is anticipated to be a rematch with Biden the following year. The “absurd” lawsuit and others like it, according to Trump’s campaign, are “stretching the law beyond recognition.”

(With agency inputs)