'Ironclad': Legal expert says latest effort to throw Trump off ballot is strongest yet

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump's candidacy on the 2024 ballot in Colorado using the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

And Harvard constitutional law professor and legal analyst Laurence Tribe tweeted on Wednesday that he thinks this case is the strongest he's seen thus far. There are similar lawsuits in Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire.

"This is the strongest of the suits filed to compel [secretaries] of state to apply the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause to Trump," Tribe wrote. "The 6 plaintiffs clearly have standing under Colorado law and ironclad legal and factual research backs up their complaint."

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The plaintiffs are "six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters including former state, federal and local officials," the release from CREW explains.

“Spending 19 years as a state legislator and serving in leadership gave me the opportunity to work across the aisle and to always work to protect the freedoms our Constitution has given us as citizens,” said former Colorado House and Senate Majority leader Norma Anderson in the release. “I am proud to continue that work by bringing this lawsuit and ensuring the eligibility of candidates on Colorado ballots.”

Tribe joined with retired conservative federal judge J. Michael Luttig in writing a column for The Atlantic walking through the legal reasoning behind the 14th Amendment's application to Trump's candidacy. Trump, who took an oath to support the Constitution, then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or [gave] aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

The 14 Amendment bars candidates who "engaged in insurrection."

The only way that Trump could bypass the amendment is to be granted amnesty by two-thirds of Congress. The Supreme Court could also give Trump a pass, explained former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann. It almost certainly will end up before the Court, he said.

Read the details of the lawsuit here.