Trump is blindsided by ballot ruling — and it could affect his criminal defenses: analyst
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state primary ballot under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, partially reversing a lower court decision and all but guaranteeing the U.S. Supreme Court will have to step in on the issue and settle the matter.
This was not what Trump was expecting to happen, said reporter Hugo Lowell on MSNBC — and it could have bearing not just on his ballot eligibility, but on how he can defend against the criminal cases from the special counsel and Fulton County.
"As we talked about ... there [are] these pockets of cases that coming up and they are intended and designed to ensure that we don't have another insurrection, another crazy second term with Donald Trump," said anchor Katie Phang, herself an attorney. "Is this going to change the litigation calculus, the strategy calculus for Donald Trump now, considering this decision coming out of Colorado?"
Lowell replied, "I think it necessarily changes it."
"I can tell you with certainty, according to our sources, Trump and his team didn't anticipate getting removed from the ballot at all," he continued. "After the district court's decision in Colorado, that kind of left him just off the hook. They thought that would be the end of the road ... I am speculating now, but I assume that the fact that the appeals court has ruled that Trump should be struck off the ballot will come as a surprise. I just texted someone at the campaign and they have not responded to me yet about, you know, kind of what they are thinking."
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But beyond that, Lowell added, it will impact Trump's lawyers' strategy in other cases as well.
"They have consistently called January 6th, you know, this was a First Amendment thing, this was called political speech, an argument they have made in the D.C. federal cases and an argument in the motion to dismiss in Georgia, and this was generally the argument they were settling on with respect to any questions about January 6th and what Trump said at the Ellipse rally," said Lowell. "Of course, the D.C. District Court has also, you know, rejected Trump's arguments that the speech makes him immune from prosecution because they found — well, the judge essentially found that it is not immunizing if the speech was in furtherance of a crime. And I think the fact this is piling up necessarily has to change his legal calculus going into the new year."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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