![CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig sparred with anchor John Avlon on Wednesday after Avlon tried arguing that the Colorado decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot is in line with due process. [Screenshot CNN]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-20-at-9.12.29-AM-e1703081653965.png "CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig sparred with anchor John Avlon on Wednesday after Avlon tried arguing that the Colorado decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot is in line with due process. [Screenshot CNN]")
CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig sparred with anchor John Avlon on Wednesday after Avlon tried to argue the Colorado decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot is in line with due process.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 Tuesday that Trump violated the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” and is ineligible to be on the ballot in the state. The ruling is on hold pending an appeal to the Supreme Court until Jan. 4. The issue must be settled by Jan. 5, which is when the statutory deadline is to set the list of candidates for the Republican primary.
Honig first argued even if the claim that Trump engaged in an insurrection is an agreed-upon truth, there is still no guidance for who gets to decide when someone has participated in an insurrection. He said while the Constitution says Congress is responsible for passing laws explaining how this works, Congress has not clarified the amendment.
“What Colorado did is they sort of made up this procedure, they had this quasi-hearing over five days and now the Supreme Court of Colorado by a 4-3 margin is saying, ‘Eh good enough, he’s out.’ That is a violation of due process, and that is why I think this ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court is going to be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.” (RELATED: ‘This Is Dead Wrong’: Turley Blasts ‘Fundamentally Flawed’ Ruling By Colorado Court Barring Trump From Ballot)
“There have been a lot of roadblocks in this effort based on a lot of people finding technicalities. The Constitution says what it says. The Colorado Supreme Court decided that the Constitution still matters and it applies to Donald Trump. The 14th Amendment, Section 3 specifically says, we had the language up there, that no person who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and engages in an insurrection or rebellion and gives aid or comfort to said insurrection or rebellion, is eligible to hold any office. That’s the language. Any office. Civil or federal,” Avlon argued.
“And people can parse, well, was it anticipated to be under a president? I know if you read the articles, the debates around the ratification, senators at that time are saying, this is also forward-looking, this is not just about the confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. I take Elie’s point, he and I have had a long, vigorous disagreement about the application of this. But the Constitution exists for a reason. And if people keep looking for loopholes to excuse Donald Trump for accountability against the Constitution, that’s where you reap – this is not partisan, this is about applying historic principles.”
“Due process is not a loophole,” Honig shot back. “Due process is in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. By the way, when Donald Trump lost dozens of his election suits in 2020, what did Donald Trump’s people say, ‘Oh, those are technicalities, those are loopholes?’ Those matter. Due process matters, we can’t just throw it out.”
“Respectfully, I don’t think this is an issue of due process,” Avlon pushed back. “This is an issue about whether Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection, and whether, therefore, the constitutional remedy for that applies. And I think people are going to put all sorts of partisan spin on the ball and I’d encourage them not to. Shouldn’t cheerlead this from the left, and you shouldn’t deny it from the right. If you believe, I’ll say, philosophic consistency is gonna hold the day – then any originalist on the court would say the text in the Constitution matters and states’ rights matters with regard to Colorado … Read the 74-page document by the two Federal Society jurists, legal scholars who went into this impartially and said ‘You know what? It does apply when you look at the full context.'”
“Or look at the six other states that’ve rejected this,” Honig said. “Just put it this way: If you had gotten 100 brilliant lawyers, scholars, historians, a week ago, two years ago, and said ‘How does impeachment work?’ Everyone would’ve given you the same answer. We have a process for that. The House votes by a majority, then the Senate votes, has a trial, votes by two-thirds. You got that same group together two years ago and say ‘How does the 14th Amendment work?’ You hear a hundred different answers, that’s why this is a due process problem.”
Chief Justice Brian Boatright, who dissented, argued Colorado’s election law “was not enacted to decide whether a candidate engaged in insurrection,” according to CNN. “In the absence of an insurrection-related conviction, I would hold that a request to disqualify a candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a proper cause of action under Colorado’s election code.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung slammed the ruling as “un-American.”
The decision to remove Trump from the ballot impacts more than three million active voters in the state. Data shows amongst 3,783,006 active voters in the state as of November, 901,219 are registered Republicans.