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The cases in Colorado, Maine and other states are requiring former President Donald J. Trump to devote resources already spread thin across four criminal indictments.
By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Former President Donald J. Trump’s advisers are preparing as soon as Tuesday to file challenges to decisions in Colorado and Maine to disqualify Mr. Trump from the Republican primary ballot because of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In Maine, the challenge to the Secretary of State’s ruling to save Mr. Trump’s poll will be filed in state court. But Colorado’s ruling, passed through the state court, will face an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court, which is likely to face new pressure to rule on the issue.
On Thursday, Maine became the second state to keep Mr. Trump off the primary ballot over challenges stemming from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that any officer of the United States who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“Every state is different,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told a CBS associate Friday morning. “I have sworn to respect the Constitution.
Trump has privately told others that he believes the Supreme Court will rule overwhelmingly against the Colorado and Maine rulings, according to a user familiar with what he said. But he also criticized the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservatives. magistrates, creating a qualified majority. The court has shown little interest in cases similar to Trump’s election.
Mr. Trump has expressed concern that the conservative justices will worry about being perceived as “political” and may rule against him, according to a person with direct knowledge of his private comments.
Unlike Colorado’s resolution, which surprised many Trump insiders, the former president’s advisers had been waiting several days for Maine’s final results. They prepared a claim prior to resolution and had the maximum of their appeal history. drafted after the consolidated hearing Ms. Bellows held on Dec. 15, according to a user close to Mr. Bellows.
Those who questioned the vote sometimes argued that Trump had incited insurrection when he encouraged his supporters (he insisted the election had been stolen) to march on the Capitol while the 2020 election vote was being certified. The former president has been charged with fees similar to the imaginable attack on the Capitol, but he has not been criminally charged with “insurrection,” an argument his allies have continually emphasized.
On his social media site, Truth Social, Trump pointed to comments from Democrats that implied they were uncomfortable with the outcome of the election.
In Maine, the resolution was adopted unilaterally through Ms. Bellows after exigent situations arose. Trump’s allies have continually emphasized Ms. Bellows’ association with the Democratic Party and the fact that she is not an elected official, but an appointee.
Both decisions created dubious ground in the race for the Republican nomination, with elections in the early states scheduled to begin on Jan. 15 with the Iowa caucuses. Other challenging electoral situations may arise in other states, of which several have so far failed.
This week, a Wisconsin complaint trying to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot there was dismissed, and the secretary of state in California said Mr. Trump would remain on the ballot in that state. According to the website Lawfare, 14 states have active lawsuits seeking to remove Mr. Trump, with more expected to be filed. A decision is expected soon in a case in Oregon.
The Colorado and Maine decisions require a greater concentration of resources and attention from a Trump team that is already scattered by 4 criminal indictments in 4 other states.
But two other people close to Trump, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, described that truth as already ingrained in Trump’s team, which has focused on legal issues for up to the past two years. that in the short term, the former president would see political benefits comparable to those he saw when he indicted: a mobilization effect among Republicans.
Trump and his team tried to summarize those cases into a simple narrative that Democrats were engaged in a “witch hunt” against him, and used the election lawsuits to suggest that Democrats were interfering in the election and to divert voters’ attention. Trump’s months-long efforts to undermine the 2020 election are at the center of the legal and political arguments opposing him.
“Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from ballots,” Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement to The New York Times.
The electoral effects have another issue of interest to both the mainstream and conservative media, wasting the time and attention that Trump, who trails him in the polls, wants to catch up.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is among those challenging Christie’s nomination. Trump told CNN that the resolution “makes him a martyr,” adding, “He’s very smart to bet ‘Poor me, poor me. ‘”I’m complaining. “
Due to a number of factors, it’s unclear what practical effect efforts to exclude Trump from No. 1 in the polls in the race for the Republican nomination will have. In the Colorado case, where the state’s highest court overturned a lower court ruling and declared Trump ineligible to run in the primary and remains in the election while asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent who reports on the 2024 presidential campaign, the country’s election, and investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. Learn more about Maggie Haberman
Jonathan Swan is a political journalist covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. Learn more about Jonathan Swan
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