Trump defense in Colorado case 'could topple' authority of state courts: expert

One of the defenses Donald Trump's attorneys have offered in the U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a Colorado decision could "topple" the authority of state courts, according to a legal expert.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that the former president should be ineligible from holding office under the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause, and MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said one of Trump's arguments could undermine the entire system of appeals.

"I think the outcome is going to be that the court does not disqualify Donald Trump from being on presidential primary ballots," Rubin told "Morning Joe." "How it gets there, of course, is another story. One of the things that I expect that we'll hear at oral argument, and one of the things that puts a chill into me personally as a lawyer, is something that Donald Trump's team put on the very last pages of their brief. It's been long presumed that when a state supreme court makes a factual finding, the United States Supreme Court is supposed to defer to that. It really can't mess with the factual findings of a state supreme court."

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"However, Jonathan Mitchell, Donald Trump's lawyer here, essentially says, there is no reason for the court to give any deference to that, and they should disturb the factual findings and revisit the question of whether Trump participated in an insurrection at all," Rubin added. "In this case, that would have big consequences, but overall, in terms of Supreme Court jurisprudence, it would have huge consequences. If a state supreme court is no longer the final arbiter of its own facts and law, you can see how that would topple basically the system of state to federal appeals as we currently understand it."

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