A ruling by District Judge Sarah Wallace requiring that the Colorado secretary of state must place Donald Trump on the state's primary ballot next year, because he is not ineligible according to her reading of the 14th Amendment, was ripped apart by two constitutional law scholars appearing on MSNBC on Saturday morning.
Former federal Judge Michael Luttig and constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe spoke with host Ali Velshi less than 24 hours hour the ruling came down where Wallace agreed the former president took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection but didn't feel he was covered by wording in Section Three that would bar him from running for office.
According to Tribe, the judge made an "egregious error" in her ruling which Tribe also labeled as "bizzaro."
"The court did egregiously error in holding that the office of the president is not an office under the United States, turning constitutional interpretation upside down, by finding the unambiguous text of Section Three ambiguous because of a sliver of debate history that is not only itself ambiguous, but is rendered singularly unpersuasive by other exchanges in the debate history," Luttig explained. "That reflects the understanding that the office of president is of course an office under the United States, from which a person can be disqualified by Section Three."
'You suggested that this was a narrow interpretation of section three," he told the MSNBC host. "It is that and more. It is the narrowest possible interpretation of Section Three, it's the interpretation urged on the court by the former president's lawyers. But it's simply incorrect as a matter of constitutional law."
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Tribe added, "In paragraph 100 of the opinion, she [Judge Wallace] concludes he knew he [Trump] lost the election. so what accounts for this bizarre, actually, bizarro upside-down holding that the highest office in the land, the one of the greatest power, the one whose danger to the republic is at its maximum, would somehow be exempt?"
"That the judge herself says, she admits that sounds preposterous, that's her word," he continued. "She says it would carry the preposterous application that Jefferson Davis, who took an oath to the Constitution, before becoming a senator, then became a senator, then turned on the Constitution, then became a Confederate and the president of the Confederacy, that he could then become president of the post civil war United States?"
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"She says I know that's preposterous, but maybe the rioters just goofed," he added. "She says maybe it was inadvertent. We're not inadvertent, she says for whatever reason, that's the way she reads it."
Watch below or at the link.
MSNBC 11 18 2023 10 05 29 youtu.be
