Former Supreme Court Clerk Issues Caution Following Ruling Involving Trump

A former Supreme Court law clerk shot down the idea that the state could ban former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s ballots in the 2024 election. In an interview with Fox News, Chris Landau, a former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, called the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling “lawfare” and stated that he is confident that the U.S. high court will overturn the decision during an appearance on Fox News, saying he is confident that the high court would take one look at the case and overturn the ruling. The disagreement comes after the Colorado high court ruled to bar the former president from appearing on the ballot in the state, with the 4–3 ruling, which is based on a reading of a provision in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, and the high court will likely intervene, as some analysts have noted. While the ruling only affects the March 5 Republican primary, it could also impact President Trump’s standing in the state for the Nov. 5 general election. Nonpartisan election forecasters anticipate that Colorado will favor President Joe Biden in the general election next year, regardless of what happens to President Trump, as it is considered safely Democratic.
According to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. Constitution bars President Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024, from appearing on the ballot because of his role in the Capitol incident on Jan. 6, 2021. The court’s majority justices—all Democratic—recognized that the decision was “uncharted territory.” The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who argued that President Trump should be disqualified for inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol in a failed attempt to obstruct the transfer of presidential power to Biden after the 2020 election.
President Trump’s campaign expressed disappointment with the ruling, calling it “undemocratic.” Presidential poll numbers after the former president was indicted four separate times earlier this year have only risen, some analysts have noted. Frank Luntz, a pollster, said this week that the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision will only strengthen President Trump’s support. “Colorado has just proven Trump’s theory true that he’s the victim of political persecution[.] His poll numbers won’t drop. On the contrary, they will rise,” he posted recently. “He is now even more likely to win next November” after the ruling, he added.
An aggregate of polls shows that President Trump’s favorability among GOP voters has risen since the Colorado court ruling, and he’s now up to nearly 65 percent. He has about a 50-point lead over both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.