DENVER (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are arguing that attempts to kick him off the presidential ballot under a rarely used constitutional clause for engaging in “insurrection” are improper attempts to interfere with his freedom of speech.
The former president's attorneys made the claim in two motions posted in court Monday attempting to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to ban him from Colorado's presidential ballot.
The case is the most significant so far in a scattered attempt to end Trump's 2024 presidential run by citing a Civil War-era amendment prohibiting candidacies by those who “engaged in insurrection” against the U.S. Constitution.
The petitioners in the lawsuit, a group of voters from Colorado — most of them Republican — claim Trump made plans to “cast doubt on and undermine confidence in our nation’s election infrastructure” and knowingly sought to subvert the U.S. Constitution and system of elections through a “sustained campaign of lies” that led to the events of January 6, “when he incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol by a mob who believed they were following his orders” as he allegedly tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has yet to be charged in connection with these allegations.
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The former president is facing similar lawsuits in Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire and Minnesota, in addition to four indictments handed this year alone, which are currently moving through the court system.
He is accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia and Washington, D.C.; of hoarding classified documents he took with him to Florida after leaving the White House; and of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf in Manhattan. Some of Trump’s criminal trials are scheduled to overlap with the presidential primary season, according to the Associated Press.
The Colorado lawsuit could go before a judge as soon as Oct. 30, according to CPR News.