Faced with a lawsuit seeking to declare him ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment, former President Donald Trump's legal team tried a stall tactic that they've used in several other cases. But this time, it collapsed quickly, wrote Jordan Rubin for MSNBC.
"I noted a possible early complication in the Colorado case, with Trump trying to move it to federal court (the same sort of thing some criminal defendants in Trump’s Georgia prosecution want to do there)," wrote Rubin. But ultimately, "The effort was quickly shot down by a federal judge. That's because Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who's named in the suit along with Trump, would have also needed to want to move the case to federal court. But she didn't. That flaw in Trump’s removal attempt led Chief U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer to dismiss it as 'defective' on Tuesday, sending it back to the state court."
This development, wrote Rubin, is "an embarrassing and unnecessary early loss in the litigation from the Trump team."
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The Colorado challenge is one of several lawsuits filed by various advocacy groups on behalf of voters, alleging that the 14th Amendment renders Trump ineligible by virtue of engaging "in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States. Another such lawsuit was filed in Minnesota earlier this week.
Trump didn't carry either Colorado or Minnesota either time he ran for office, so a ruling against him in either state wouldn't necessarily affect his path to the presidency in 2024. Also, both lawsuits need to overcome a number of challenges, including that case law is unclear how exactly the 14th Amendment's Insurrection Clause can be enforced by entities other than Congress.
"Ultimately, whether it’s through these suits or any others, it’s an issue that the Supreme Court may ultimately need to resolve," concluded Rubin. "And with these latest developments, we may be closer to that resolution."
