On Thursday, the lead attorney representing Colorado before the Supreme Court argued for removing Donald Trump from this year’s presidential ballot, saying during cross-examination that his rationale would preemptively invalidate the election results. acknowledged that it may be applied.
As Breitbart News Senior Legal Contributor Ken Kurkowski explained after oral argument, Colorado attorney Jared Murray has been rejected by liberal judges like Ketanji Brown Jackson. was unprepared for the myriad opposition to the lawsuit. One moment highlighted by Kurkowski reveals the “danger” of Murray’s reasoning. Even days before a national election, state legislatures could bar candidates deemed “insurrectionists” from winning state electors in the Electoral College, even if they win. There is. by people’s vote.
Read the full exchange [emphasis added]:
Justice Alito: I don’t know how much you can infer from the fact that we’ve never seen anything like this before, so we can conclude that nothing is ever going to happen. From President Johnson’s impeachment to President Clinton’s impeachment more than 100 years later, there had never been a presidential impeachment. And in a fairly short period of time, over the past few decades, there have been three. So I’m not sure how much we can extrapolate from that.
Mr. MURRAY: Indeed, but if this court were to affirm, this court would recognize the extraordinary nature of unconstitutional insurrection because it requires an attack not just on the application of the law, but on the very constitutionally mandated functions. , one could write an opinion piece emphasizing how rare that is. , as we saw on January 6, is a systematic attempt to thwart a function required by the 12th Amendment and essential to the constitutional transfer of presidential power.
Justice Alito: Now, let me ask you a question about whether the authority that you described as plenary is really plenary. Suppose that the outcome of a presidential election is determined by a single state vote, or how the electors of a single state vote. And suppose Candidate A wins a majority of the votes in that state, but Congress doesn’t really like Candidate A and thinks Candidate A is an insurrectionist. Congress then passes a law ordering electors to vote for other candidates. Do you think the state has such authority?
Mr. Murray: I think the principle that states can’t change the rules mid-stream might come into play once the people vote in Congress. I don’t know because I don’t know that this court deals with that. And indeed,
Justice Alito: Well, let’s change it so it’s not after the election. That’s three days before the election, based on the fact that the polls in that state are looking bad. can they do it?
Mr.Murray: I think you probably can. Based on the judgment of this court, Chiafalo [v. Washington]The court emphasized that for most of American history, state legislatures selected their own electors and assigned their own electors. But of course it will be much more unusual than what I have described here. This simply applies normal state voting access principles to say that only individuals who are eligible to hold public office are intended to be on the ballot.
