Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), known as a government watchdog organization, has filed a legal challenge against the eligibility for the ballot in Colorado of former President Donald Trump. Representing a group of plaintiffs from the state, the organization is challenging Trump’s eligibility on the basis of the now much discussed 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That portion of the nation’s guiding document blocks individuals from holding elected office if they previously engaged in insurrection or provided aid and comfort to enemies of the United States after having taken an oath to defend the Constitution, such as Trump took at his inauguration. Many of those who participated in the actual assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have linked their actions to Trump, who himself is now criminally charged for perpetrating efforts around and leading up to that day to effectively overturn the duly documented will of Americans in the 2020 presidential race. Such was to see Joe Biden enter the White House.
Some have argued, though, that a criminal conviction isn’t necessary for enforcing the provisions found in that amendment believed to apply to Trump. CREW was involved in a successful, previous lawsuit that pushed a New Mexico county commissioner from office after he joined the crowds outside the Capitol and was criminally charged for it.
“While Section 3 has not been tested often in the last 150 years, due to lack of insurrections, last year CREW represented residents of New Mexico who sued to remove county commissioner Couy Griffin from office, the only successful case to be brought under Section 3 since 1869,” the organization notes in a press release. Griffin has been involved in a pro-Trump group known as Cowboys for Trump. CREW noting that the lack of an extensive legal record for the implementation of those 14th Amendment rules is “due to lack of insurrections” certainly well exemplifies the extremity of the present moment brought by Donald Trump.
