Amid a dispute at the U.S. Supreme Court around whether former President Donald Trump can appear on the ballot in this year’s presidential race, a large group of Republicans across both chambers of Congress have filed their own set of arguments with the judges against the decision from Colorado’s state Supreme Court that would boot him.
And Hayes Brown, a writer for MSNBC, pointedly posits that certain Republicans have a self-serving ambition in joining the arguments, as they themselves could become seriously vulnerable to arguments for their disqualification.
The case against Trump and potential cases against these Republicans rest on the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which blocks individuals who previously took an oath of office and then engaged in insurrection from holding a wide variety of elected positions subsequently. And multiple courts in Colorado concluded that Trump had, in fact, engaged in insurrection via incitement of the violence seen at the Capitol in 2021. Well, Trump wasn’t alone in at least setting up the baseless conspiracy theories on the 2020 election — and then encouraging action, all of which spurred violence.
“Beyond being yet another attempt to normalize Trump’s behavior in trying to throw out the election, these arguments necessarily downplay the attempts by several of the brief’s signatories to do the same,” Brown wrote of the Republican arguments filed with the Supreme Court.
“Jordan, Gosar and Biggs were well aware of what Trump was attempting to achieve, and despite their oaths to support the Constitution, they still backed him. Dozens of other signatories voted against certifying Biden’s win even after the rioters had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The goal of their brief isn’t just to keep their party’s standard-bearer on the ballot, but it’s also to absolve themselves of their own sins and to inoculate themselves from calls that they, too, face accountability for supporting Trump’s attempt to steal the election.”
As one example of the problem, Jordan was among those explicitly pushing the idea after the 2020 presidential election that Trump had actually won.
