The January 6, 2021 Capitol Attack: Mike Pence’s Twitter Tweet about a Democratic Senator from Colorado did not commit an insurrection
DENVER — A Colorado judge on Friday found that former President Donald Trump engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the state’s primary ballot because it’s unclear whether a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.
Lawyers for Trump want the judge to take away mention of what occurred that day from the indictment because they could cause a jury to be prejudiced.
For the first time, the Justice Department team said they are going to use video evidence to show Trump encouraged the crowd at the rally to go to the Capitol, starting 15 minutes into his speech. They said they will provide testimony, photos and geolocation evidence — essentially, cell phone pings — to show how specific Trump supporters listened to him, then went on to strong-arm police and breach the Capitol.
“The defendant’s decision to rally behind January 6 rioters and their cause is relevant to the jury’s determination of whether he intended the actions at the Capitol that day,” Gaston and Windom wrote.
The early skirmish in the case is very important and closely watched because of the significance of the events on January 6.
Prosecutors plan to demonstrate how Trump used angry rioters as a “tool” in his campaign against Mike Pence, through testimony and videos.
“I think that one of the most material things that he did during that time was his 2:24 p.m. tweet about Mike Pence, essentially arguing to all of his followers that Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what needed to be done and that was while he knew that the Capitol was under attack,” said Georgetown University Law Center professor Mary McCord, who is closely following the case.
The mob chanted “hang Mike Pence” and “traitor” as they shouted at him to be killed while he hid on Capitol grounds. The prosecutors said that Trump wasn’t different from Pence in that he watched the events on television.
As the trial looms, Trump is likely to file more court papers in order to try to prevent prosecutors from introducing specific pieces of evidence.
The First Two Years of Insurrection: A State of the Art and Recent Judicial Results in Trump’s Moose
Indeed, Lauro and Blanche signaled in a footnote this week they would seek to prevent jurors from hearing about acts of “extraordinary violent and destructive” behavior. District Judge Chutkan will make the final decisions regarding the issues of evidence.
Trump’s lawyers said the former president called for the rally crowd to be “peaceful and patriotic.” They asserted that most of the crowd at the rally on Jan. 6 did behave peacefully.
Prosecutors said in a filing that Trump befriended members of the mob, including rioters who are awaiting trial in the D.C. jail. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said he was considering pardons for people sentenced to prison for crimes in January.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a group of Republican and independent Colorado voters who believed Trump’s actions constituted insurrection against the will of the people.
In a little over a week there have been three rulings against lawsuits trying to remove Trump from the ballot because of Section 3 of the amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court said last week that Trump could stay on the primary ballot because political parties have a choice of who to put on the ballot.
Legal experts said it was significant that Wallace found Trump had engaged in insurrection. She wrote that she agreed with the petitioners’ claim that he “incited” the attack.
The Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. The case of the Colorado state supreme court in a case against a former president in insurrection
Section 3 does not specifically refer to the presidency, as it does members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Instead, the clause refers to “elector of President and Vice President,” along with civil and military offices.
“Part of the Court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section Three,” the judge wrote in the 102-page ruling.
The most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats are represented by these cases.
If the Colorado case goes to the Supreme Court, that’s where Section 3 would likely end. Free Speech for people filed an appeal of their case in state court.
“It’s a stunning holding for a court to conclude that a former president engaged in insurrection against the United States,” said Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has followed the case closely. “And there’s a good chance that, on appeal, a court bars him from the ballot.”
Scott Gessler, an attorney for Trump, said during closing arguments that the petitioners were asking the court to do something that had never been done before in the United States. “The evidence doesn’t come close to allowing the court to do it.”
They called a law professor who testified that the clause barred former Confederacys from becoming president. He also showed post-Civil War documents indicating that even an act such as buying Confederate war bonds could make someone ineligible for office.
The attorneys were of the opinion that Trump was disqualified from being president because he failed to meet the 35-year age limit. They said that there was a reflection on Trump’s actions and that this had never happened before.
The case turned on 150-year-old records from the debate over the 14th Amendment. There is no direct evidence that the measure was intended to apply to the presidency. She noted that Trump attorneys flagged a finding by one law professor that an early draft specified the presidency and vice presidency, but the final version did not. The phrase “officers of the United States” has not been included in the Constitution due to it being a phrase that does not include the top two offices.
“The record demonstrates an appreciable amount of tension between the competing interpretations, and a lack of definitive guidance in the text or historical sources,” Wallace wrote.
Source: A Colorado judge finds Trump ‘engaged in insurrection,’ but keeps him on the ballot
Free Speech For People (CREW) vs. Cawthorn: A trial against a Minnesota legislator who lost his primary
Free Speech For People filed challenges in both Minnesota and Michigan, as well as attempting to remove two Republican legislators from the ballot. Cawthorn’s case became moot when he lost his primary, and a judge ruled against the lawsuit seeking to oust Greene.
CREW successfully used Section 3 to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was later convicted of a misdemeanor.