Colorado Supreme Court Drops Trump Election Surprise | CLIP | Facts Matter

[Music] [Music] you know that weird weird feeling when election day finally arrives you go to your local polling place only to find that the guy you wanted to vote for has been entirely removed from the ballot and he was removed from that ballot by four local judges from the opposition political party and so you say okay well that's weird let me just write his name in however those same judges they instructed the local election officials to not count any right in vote for that particular candidate now if all this sounds to you like an election somewhere in Russia in Brazil or maybe Venezuela well you would be wrong this is an election taking place over in Colorado and perhaps California soon as well because you see just yesterday the Colorado state supreme court they issued a ruling ordering the Secretary of State to remove president Trump's name from the 2024 ballot and the details of how this Colorado case got to this point are truly revealing and so today let's go through the details of this case let's go through the Court's decision let's go through how other states are using this Court's decision to basically do the same thing in their respective States let's go through who's financing all those behind the scenes on several previous episodes we've already discussed the lawsuits which have been filed in States across the whole country trying to get Trump removed from the ballot the basic argument of all these different laws suits is that since president Trump quote unquote engaged in an Insurrection on January the 6th he should no longer be eligible to hold office as per the 14th Amendment and just for your reference here is what the pertinent section of the 14th Amendment says this is section number three quote no person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of president and vice president or hold any office civil or military under the United States or under any state who having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of any state legislature or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United States shall have engaged in Insurrection or Rebellion against the same or given Aid or Comfort to the enemies thereof and as you can likely guess this amendment was enacted shortly after the US Civil War in order to keep former members of the Confederacy out of government but in the modern political context opponents of President Trump are making the argument that he was involved in an Insurrection on January the 6th and therefore as per the 14th Amendment he should be borrowed from serving office in the future and along that line looking Across America you have 31 different cases having been filed in 26 different states all looking to get Trump off the ballot in those individual municipalities the map on your screen is where these lawsuits have sprung up in each one of those States there's been at least one lawsuit filed looking to get Trump kicked off the ballot however up until now all these different cases across the whole country trying to make this happen they were thrown out one after the other and the reasons that they were thrown out it varied from state to state some judges found that Trump did not engage in an Insurrection other judges ruled that their Secretary of State doesn't have the authority to remove candidates from the ballot other judges they determined that the wording of section three of the 14th Amendment it specifically did not apply to the Office of the President and so on and so on and so forth the cases were dismissed for a variety of reasons and this included what took place over in Colorado specifically over in Colorado quote you had six local voters represented by activist group citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington who sued Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswald demanding the election official take president Trump off of the state's primary ballot this case eventually made it a trial wherein for about a week you had these activist voters trying to prove that January 6th constituted an actual Insurrection that President Trump quote unquote engaged in it and that section three of the 14th Amendment applied to the office of the United States president on the flip side lawyers for Trump were making the exact counterargument that January 6th was not an Insurrection that President Trump did not engage in it regardless and the third argument was that section three of the 14th Amendment actually did not apply to the Office of the President these were the two competing arguments at trial now eventually the judge in this case she ruled in favor of President Trump although her ruling had kind of an interesting twist that's because this Lower Court Colorado judge she ruled that January 6th was an Insurrection that President Trump did engage in it however despite all that she also found that the 14th Amendment actually did not apply to the office of the US president here's what she wrote in her order quote the petitioners argued that officer of the United States would certainly cover the highest office in the federal government but there was scanned evidence that that was the case the authors of the 14th Amendment specifically listed offices starting with the highest levels and descending thereafter to lump the presidency in with any other civil or military office is odd indeed and very troubling to the court because Section 3 explicitly lists all federal elected positions except the President and Vice President and so with that r chel she ruled in favor of President Trump however the case was appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court where just yesterday they overturned this Lower Court decision and they ordered that President Trump be removed from the 2024 ballot the primary ballot initially and then subsequently the general election ballot specifically in a 43 Split Decision the Colorado Supreme Court they determined that section three of the 14th Amendment did apply to the office of the president that President Trump did engage in an Insurrection and therefore they ordered the Secretary of State to remove his name from the ballot so here's specifically what they wrote quote we conclude that because president Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 it will be a wrongful act under the election code for the secretary to list president Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot therefore the secretary may not list president Trump's name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot nor may she count any right in votes cast for him now by the way just as an aside it's worth mentioning that these four Colorado Supreme Court justices in their official ruling they made the determination that what took place on January the 6th qualified as an actual Insurrection and therefore it fell under the purview of the 14th Amendment however here's the interesting thing Insurrection and Rebellion are not just words Insurrection and Rebellion are actual legal crimes which are laid out in section 18 of the US criminal code specifically subsection 2383 and so it might be the case that you have people politicians and the mainstream media at large using the word Insurrection when referring to January 6 but from a legal perspective no one has actually been found guilty of actual Rebellion or Insurrection in fact there was a phenomenal analysis that was in the pages of the New York Times of all places and they summed it up rather succinctly quote Insurrection charges are considered difficult to prove and are exceedingly rare while many people have called the events of January 6 an Insurrection the justice department has not charged any riers with that crime in addition to the handful of seditious conspiracy charges against members of two militias the oathkeepers and the proud boys prosecutors have charged various RI ERS with such crimes as assaulting police officers obstructing an official Congressional proceeding and trespassing however despite the fact that no one has been charged with or found guilty of insurrection or Rebellion well the Colorado state supreme court they relied on Expert testimony from Scholars of political extremism to determine that January 6th was indeed an Insurrection if you actually want to read through the logic of the justices in terms of their reasoning I'll throw a link to the pdf version of their full ruling it'll be down in the description box below you can read for it yourself if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the Wheats regardless though getting back to what actually took place because the Colorado state supreme court anticipated the fact that Trump and his legal team were going to appeal this decision all the way up to the US Supreme Court they actually put a hold on their own ruling quote the Colorado High Court composed of all Democrat appointees stayed its ruling until January 4th of 2024 pending any review by the US Supreme Court if the Supreme Court agrees to review the issue by January 4th the Colorado secretary of state will be required to continue to include president Trump on the primary ballot otherwise he will be removed from the primary ballot this means that Trump's legal team will now be appealing this decision to the US Supreme Court and if the court agrees to take up and review the case Trump's name will still appear in the primary ballot while the case is still pending on the US Supreme Court docket however if the Supreme Court either rejects the case or they accept it after January 4th this means that Trump's name will be removed from the Colorado primary ballot