State and U.S. Attorneys’ Brief Report on Donald Trump’s Electoral Campaign and the Colorado Supreme Court Response to an Insurrection
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, described the lawsuits in a statement last week as “bad-faith, politically motivated attempts to steal the 2024 election,” claiming that Democrats had “launched a multifront lawfare campaign to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters and interfere in the election.” Mr. Cheung didn’t respond to the request for comment.
Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in state court in Maine on Tuesday seeking to overturn the secretary of state’s decision, and on Wednesday he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado ruling.
The issue is urgent because Donald Trump has a commanding lead over his opponents in recent polls, and Republican primary elections and caucuses begin this month.
Those lawsuits can generally be divided into three categories: Mr. Castro’s lawsuits, almost all of which have been filed in federal court; state challenges filed by two nonprofit organizations; and one-off cases brought in state or federal courts by local residents. In a number of places, including Maine, voters have questioned Mr. Trump’s eligibility directly with a secretary of state or election commission rather than in court. Some elected officials in California and New York wrote letters to their election officers requesting that they disqualify the former president.
Most establishment Democrats have not publicly embraced the cause. President Biden said after the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that it was “self-evident” that Mr. Trump had supported an insurrection, but that it was up to the judiciary to determine his eligibility for the ballot. The question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been deferred to the courts by several Democratic secretaries of state, who in most of the country are their states’ chief election officers.
The lawyers for Colorado voters said that the court should decide the merits on an fast basis so that primary voters are aware of whether or not Trump is qualified to be President. Ballots there need to be returned by March 5 in order to be counted.
The question is urgent since states are going to make ballots for Americans overseas in the coming weeks. In Colorado, most voters choose to vote by mail and the contest takes place on March 5. Colorado officials said Trump would remain on the ballot during the course of an appeal.
Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court set off the equivalent of a legal earthquake when it kicked Trump off the Republican primary ballot. He was found to have violated his oath of office and that his actions around the storming of the Capitol were an “insurrection.”
The court majority wrote that they didn’t reach these conclusions lightly. The questions we’re facing are very big and have a lot of weight. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”