DENVER — Lawyers sparred Tuesday over former President Donald Trump’s relationship with the mob that attacked the Capitol, an important point in a Colorado lawsuit seeking to bar him from the 2024 ballot under the rarely used “insurrection” clause of the Constitution.
Still to come: arguments over whether the events of Jan. 6, 2021, amounted to an insurrection under a provision put in the Constitution in 1868 to prevent former confederates from taking over the government.
The plaintiffs presented testimony from an extremism expert who maintained that Trump had a clear relationship with far-right extremists and that they interpreted his pleas to protest the certification of President Joe Biden’s win as a call to arms.
“A consistent theme is individuals reporting that they thought that Donald Trump had sent them there,” said sociology professor Peter Simi of Chapman University, a private college in Southern California.
Trump’s lawyers say his comments protesting the election results were merely a matter of him stating his opinion, which he had every right to do.
The hearing in Colorado is one of two this week — with the second before the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday — that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court has never before ruled on the Civil War-era provision in the 14th Amendment.
Late Tuesday, a law professor was expected to testify about Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which has been used only a handful of times since it was adopted a century and a half ago. The testimony will get to the heart of the thorny legal issues the case raises — what constitutes an “insurrection” and how can the extreme political penalty of being barred from office be applied?
The plaintiff’s lawyers contend the provision is straightforward and that Trump is clearly disqualified from the presidency, just as if he were under the Constitution’s minimum age for the office of 35.
