Scott Gessler, an attorney for Donald Trump, was peppered with questions in a Colorado case that could keep the former president off the state's ballot.
During oral arguments on Wednesday, a justice for the Colorado Supreme Court asked Gessler how it was not "absurd" to claim the Constitution's framers would have allowed an insurrectionist to be president.
Gessler has previously argued that the president is not an "officer," so the language of the 14th Amendment does not apply.
"How is it not absurd to say anybody who engaged in an insurrection can't serve an office who except the president or a former president or a vice president or a former president?" the court asked. "How is that not absurd?"
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Gessler said it wasn't "beyond reason" that the framers of the 14th Amendment would want an insurrectionist as president.
"But do you really think the framers took a whole lot of comfort in the fact that the electors are gonna protect us from an insurrectionist former president like [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis?" the court pressed.
"Yes, and that's why they included them," Gessler insisted.
