Donald Trump is facing more issues in court — and once again, it may help him win with GOP voters.
The former president has, for now, been removed from election ballots in Colorado and Maine over concerns that he violated the 14th Amendment’s clause banning those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
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But the Supreme Court could nix the challenges with a ruling favorable to Trump, and if it does, the saga could wind up as just one more example of the 45th president soaking up the spotlight and refueling his anti-establishment persona.
“The challengers are rapidly fulfilling Trump’s narrative of a weaponized legal system and the anti-democratic tendencies of his opponents,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “This disqualification effort bulldozes any moral high ground for these Trump critics.”
Turley believes the high court will ultimately reject the 14th Amendment challenges, calling them legally and historically unfounded.
While Trump has been barred in only two states to date, a broader campaign from various advocacy groups to remove him has resulted in dozens of cases seeking a similar result.
Sean Grimsley, an attorney representing the anti-Trump challengers in Colorado, said he was encouraged that the state’s ruling could be replicated.
“[Trump] betrayed his oath to the Constitution by engaging in insurrection against it, and by doing so he made himself ineligible for public office,” Grimsley said in a statement. “We hope and believe other states will now follow suit.”
Challenges to Trump’s candidacy have been rejected in California and Michigan, and the various state-level decisions are likely to lead to a high court ruling on the matter. The Supreme Court has never before ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Trump blasted the Colorado ruling in a social media post, calling it a “pathetic gambit to rig the election.”
The wrangling over a Trump-involved court case is becoming a familiar theme of the 2024 presidential election cycle. The ex-president entered 2023 looking wounded after several of his hand-picked candidates lost contests in the midterm elections while Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) won the former swing state of Florida by a 20-point landslide.
DeSantis threatened Trump’s dominance throughout the spring, hovering at 30% support to Trump’s 45%, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
That all changed when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump at the end of March on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Within days, Trump’s support surged above 50% while DeSantis slipped into the low 20s.
The 14th Amendment cases appear to be having a similar effect. Already the runaway front-runner, Trump is closing in on 65% support nationally, with DeSantis struggling to even remain in double digits.
“It clearly doesn’t hurt him in the primary because, as we’ve seen so many times, any time Trump gets in trouble, most of his opponents rush to his defense,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said.
Indictments from Democratic prosecutors and left-leaning groups have forced challengers like DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to defend Trump while simultaneously trying to convince voters to look elsewhere.
Primaries starting just weeks from now should settle the question of how Republican primary voters think. A wider question is the effect the Colorado ruling and other indictments have on the general election, should Trump make it that far.
“It’s just not clear yet if it plays a role,” Heye said. “If the Supreme Court shoots it down, it probably has little to no effect.”
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Another Republican strategist, John Feehery, said Democrats are clearly helping Trump, even if they don’t quite realize it.
“If I believed in conspiracy theories, I would think that the Democrats are doing all of this on purpose to make sure that Trump wins the GOP nomination,” he said. “But I think the reality is that Democrats are so overcome by Trump derangement syndrome that they don’t even know how stupid all of these things look to the average voters.”
