The president agreed with a key part of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to kick Trump off state ballots.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that former President Donald Trump supported an insurrection against the U.S. government when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election result.
The Colorado Supreme Court had said Tuesday that Trump is disqualified from appearing on state ballots as he seeks to retake the White House, because the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars insurrectionists from holding office.
Biden said he wouldn’t comment on the court case, but when a reporter asked if Trump is an insurrectionist, Biden called it “self-evident.â€
“Whether the 14th Amendment applies or not, we’ll let the court make that decision,†Biden said after getting off Air Force One in Milwaukee. “But he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on it.â€
Whether the events of Jan. 6, 2021, counted as an “insurrection†was a key consideration for the Colorado Supreme Court, which parsed multiple dictionary definitions in its opinion. The case will likely wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court, with the Colorado court delaying the implementation of its own ruling until Jan. 4 so the high court can weigh in.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, drafted after the Civil War with an eye toward barring former Confederate officials from serving in Congress, says that nobody can “hold any office†in the U.S. if they had previously taken an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.â€
The Colorado Supreme Court said that for the purposes of Section 3, any definition of insurrection “would encompass a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.â€
Trump attorney Scott Gessler argued before the court that there’s no workable definition of “insurrection,†but that the word nevertheless describes something worse than what happened on Jan. 6.
“It’s more than a three-hour riot in one building,†Gessler said in an oral argument earlier this month. “The events of January 6th were more like a riot and far less like ― far less than a rebellion ― and insurrection is far closer to rebellion than it is riot.â€
Regardless, the court found the Jan. 6, 2021, mob of rioting Trump supporters to be insurrectionary, and found that Trump had “engaged†in the insurrection through his public encouragement of their actions, both that day and in the prior weeks. More than 1,200 of Trump’s supporters have been charged with crimes, and Trump himself faces criminal charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The idea that the Constitution already bars Trump from holding office again, without Congress taking any action, has been endorsed and popularized by a conservative legal scholar and former appeals court judge named J. Michael Luttig.
Biden has previously referred to the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol as an insurrection.
“This wasn’t a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection,†Biden said on the first anniversary of the attack. “They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people.â€
Some Republicans have always quibbled with the I-word, though prominent lawmakers such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have embraced the term.
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