After the Supreme Court ruling on the Colorado ballot disqualification case, former United States President Donald Trump said that it was a "BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!".
While posting on Truth Social, Trump said the Democrat plan to erase his name crashed and burned.
"The unhinged Democrat plan to ERASE MY NAME crashed & burned, but our fight to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is far from over," the email read.
The court ruled that the power resides with Congress to invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots.
The 14th Amendment Section 3 bars from office any "officer of the United States" who took an oath "to support the Constitution of the United States" and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof," stated the ruling.
With the recent court ruling, Trump's presidential campaign continues unobstructed as the decision applies to ballots in all states. Colorado, Illinois, Maine and other states will now have to put his name on the ballots.
Based on the 14th Amendment, Trump was barred from the ballot in Maine and Illinois. But it was put on hold pending the Supreme Court's ruling in the Colorado case.
Trump's eligibility had been challenged in court by a group of six voters in Colorado - four Republicans and two independents - who portrayed him as a threat to democracy and sought to hold him accountable for the US Capitol attacks in 2021.
Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the upcoming US elections.
On January 6, 2021, Trump’s supporters barged into the Capitol attacking the police and breaking the barricades. Trump gave an incendiary speech to supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud and telling them to go to the Capitol and "fight like hell,” reported Reuters.
In ruling against Trump, Colorado's top court cited the "general atmosphere of political violence that President Trump created" and that he aided "the insurrectionists' common unlawful purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power in this country."
The Supreme Court heard arguments on February 8. Trump's lawyer argued that he is not subject to the disqualification language because a president is not an "officer of the United States," that the provision cannot be enforced by courts absent congressional legislation, and that what occurred was shameful, criminal and violent but not an insurrection.
(With agencies' input)
