Former President Donald Trump called the Supreme Court’s hearing on challenges to his ballot access “a beautiful thing,” saying Thursday that attempts to throw him off the ballot were “election interference.”
He defended himself against the Colorado Supreme Court’s conclusion that he egged on an insurrection on Jan. 6 by encouraging supporters to disrupt the Electoral College vote count.
Mr. Trump said his words were “very beautiful, very heartwarming statements.”
“I said peacefully and patriotically,” Mr. Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
He also objected to the characterization of Jan. 6 as an insurrection.
“There were no guns,” he said.
Mr. Trump said he followed the oral argument in the high court, where lawyers for Colorado voters and the secretary of state argued his behavior runs afoul of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which bars certain officeholders who engaged in an insurrection from holding certain future offices.
Jason Murray, the lawyer for the voters challenging Mr. Trump, said all the justices had to do was look at the former president’s behavior surrounding the 2020 election.
“Ultimately what we have here is an insurrection that was incited in plain sight for all to see,” he said. “The reason we are here is that President Trump tried to disenfranchise 80 million Americans who voted against him. The Constitution doesn’t require he be given another chance.”
The justices didn’t spend much time on the insurrection piece of the puzzle, instead focusing on whether states are supposed to be the ones making determinations about who appears on the ballot. There was deep skepticism from both Democratic and GOP-appointed justices about states playing a role in blocking a candidate using Section 3.
Mr. Trump said to oust him would be insulting to millions of supporters.
“Can you take the person that’s leading everywhere and say ’Hey, we’re not going to let you run?’” he said.
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He suggested he would abide by what the court decides: “I’m leaving it up to the Supreme Court.”
Mr. Trump also seemed to acknowledge his loss in 2020, saying that if the results had “been different” Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel, China would be less aggressive and the world wouldn’t “have the Ukrainian situation with Russia.”
The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision in December, ruled Mr. Trump could not appear on the state’s GOP presidential primary ballot next month. The majority said he did engage in an insurrection, that he was afforded enough due process, that Section 3 applies to him and that the state can enforce it on its own without needing a criminal conviction or a decision or authority from Congress.
To win, Mr. Trump needs to prevail on any of those questions.
He said he was pleased with how his lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, did.
“I thought the presentation today was a very good one. I think it was well received,” Mr. Trump said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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