Trump asks Supreme Court to overturn Colorado ballot ban

Washington: Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to clear the path for him to run in the 2024 presidential election by overturning a contentious Colorado decision to remove him from the ballot in that state.

One day after the former president appealed a similar decision in Maine, Trump filed a petition on Wednesday (Washington time) asking the America’s highest court to weigh in on his candidacy, and “return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters”.

The move comes after Colorado and Maine found that Trump had incited an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 after losing the election to Joe Biden and should therefore be disqualified from running in their Republican presidential primary races.

However, his campaign described those decisions as “an unAmerican, unconstitutional act of election interference which cannot stand”.

“We urge a clear, summary rejection of the Colorado Supreme Court’s wrongful ruling and the execution of a free and fair election this November,” said spokesman Steven Cheung.

The appeal places the US Supreme Court at the centre of the 2024 presidential election, with the Colorado case just one of the number of issues its justices will have to determine as the campaign kicks into gear.

The nine-member bench is made up predominantly of conservative judges, three of which were appointed under Trump. It has already taken up a case challenging a law used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Capitol riots, and it could also end up examining Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The court is not obliged to take the latest case, but the fact that Trump faces legal challenges to his candidacy in several states makes it highly likely that the nine-member bench will do so to provide some national consistency about whether he should be disqualified from running for office.

Colorado and Maine removed Trump from the ballot in their states using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Civil War era clause that bars those who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country from holding federal office.

However, several other states, including Democratic-controlled Michigan, have rejected election challenges using the same clause and allowed Trump to remain on the ballot for primary races.

Nikki Haley, now considered by some to be Trump’s greatest rival for the Republican nomination, hit out at his disqualification.Credit: Getty

With 13 days to go until the first votes are cast in Iowa for the Republican primaries – in which party members get to choose their preferred presidential nominee – Trump has used the Colorado and Maine decisions to fundraise and build momentum in his campaign to win his party’s presidential nomination.

The 77-year-old is already the overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican race, despite facing 91 criminal charges across four different trials, and is now more than 30 points ahead of his Republican rivals, who include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

In another sign of his tendency to defy the odds, Trump’s poll numbers have surged every time he has been indicted, fuelling concerns among Democrats that trying to stop him from contesting the election could do more harm than good.

“I have very, very strong reservations about all of this,” former Obama administration adviser David Axelrod told CNN after the Maine decision last week.

“I do think it would rip the country apart if he were actually prevented from running because tens of millions of people want to vote for him.”

Trump’s rivals have also weighed in, with Haley, Christie and DeSantis all agreeing he should have the right to run against them for the Republican nomination.

Trump filed his appeal to the Kennebec Superior Court of Maine on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), five days after its Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows declared his name should not be on the ballot because of his actions surrounding the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In a sign of a potentially chaotic election season, one day after the Maine decision, Bellows was “swatted”, with a fake sending police to her home.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.Credit: AP

She becomes the latest elected politician to become a target of “swatting”, or making a phone call to emergency services with the intent that a large first responder presence will show up at a residence.

Trump is not the only person who faces court this year as the US election kicks into gear.

Also on Tuesday, Democratic senator Bob Menendez – who pleaded not guilty last year over an alleged scheme that involved taking bribes in exchange for helping the Egyptian government with military aid – faced additional allegations of wrongdoing, this time relating to his dealings with Qatar.

In a supplementary indictment by a federal grand jury, Menendez, who is one of the most high-profile AUKUS allies in the US Congress, was accused of making positive comments about Qatar in exchange for items of value, including luxury watches worth between $US10,000 and $US24,000.

He was a member of the powerful Senate foreign relations committee at the time.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter also faces the prospect of a trial for tax evasion, which could present a major political headache as his father seeks re-election in November.

In an indictment filed in a US district court in California last month, prosecutors alleged that Hunter Biden “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019”.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.