Missouri election chief Ashcroft attacks Colorado ruling barring Trump from 2024 ballot
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft on Wednesday attacked the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Colorado ruling, which came down late Tuesday night, was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. The Civil War-era provision bars from office any “officer of the United States” who took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against it.
Ashcroft, a Republican candidate for Missouri governor in 2024, is mounting a hard-right campaign attempting to court supporters of the former president. He told a room of reporters in Jefferson City that the Colorado court erred when it determined that Trump was an “an officer of the United States” under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Trump faces criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for his role related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. The former president for months refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and held a rally to protest its certification. A mob of his supporters then attacked the Capitol to stop Congress from affirming the results.
“The state of Missouri will reject what happened in the Colorado Supreme Court,” Ashcroft said. “The people of this state will make a decision as to who they want to be the President of the United States”
Other offices covered under the provision in the U.S. Constitution include senators, representatives, electors of the president and vice president and all others “under the United States,” but it doesn’t specifically name the presidency.
“President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President,” the Colorado justices wrote in the ruling.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
The Colorado court stayed its decision until Jan. 4 or until the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, ruled on the case. Three of the court’s nine justices were appointed by Trump.
“Under a plain reading of the 14th Amendment, the president is not an officer,” Ashcroft argued on Wednesday.
“The law is clear,” he said. “It’s been clear until a certain someone that a large portion of the people of the United States do not want to be president. I get that. But the law is supposed to apply to everyone equally.”
Ashcroft said he wanted to make clear that if Missouri voters select Trump as the Republican nominee for president, then the former president will appear on the 2024 ballot in Missouri.
However, he did not answer when asked what he would do if the state’s highest court upheld the Colorado ruling. He said that the U.S. Supreme Court would not uphold it “because they would have to go against the plain language of the United States Constitution.”
When asked whether he pushed back on the argument that Trump incited the Jan. 6 attack, Ashcroft said there “are a whole lot of points to push back on” related to the Colorado decision.
“You can push back on the fact that they putatively found him guilty of a federal crime and yet he had no right to a jury trial,” he said. “That court was a kangaroo court. It is a jurisdictional mess.”
Ashcroft’s comments come as seeks to appeal to right-wing supporters typically aligned with Trump. While voters and advocacy groups have sued to block Trump from the ballot in other states across the country, there is no ongoing challenge in Missouri, Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft’s Republican opponents in the race for governor, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel from Weldon Spring, also attacked the Colorado decision.
Kehoe, in a statement, said voters “have the right to decide who our President is, not unelected liberal judges.” Eigel in a statement called the ruling “outrageous.”
Missouri will hold a series of caucuses in 2024 to determine each party’s presidential nominee. State lawmakers passed legislation in 2022 that got rid of the state’s presidential primary election as part of a broader elections bill that also enacted strict voter ID requirements.
This story was originally published December 20, 2023 at 12:28 PM.
