Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Why Judges in the Trump Jan. 6 Trial Need a Rocket Docket

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      If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, it’s now clear he will likely still have criminal indictments hanging over his head on Election Day. It’s possible that his criminal liability for the events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will remain unresolved.If that happens, voters will go to the polls without knowing whether one of the candidates in the current election is criminally responsible for trying to overturn the last one and subvert the will of the voters.Having an election under such circumstances is unthinkable. As Richard Nixon might have put it, voters have a right to know whether their candidate is a crook. It can be avoided, but it’s going to require the judiciary to take some extraordinary steps. And whether it happens will be decided by a relative handful of federal jurists — including a number appointed by Mr. Trump himself.Of the four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump, the federal election interference prosecution in Washington currently has the best chance of going to trial before the 2024 presidential vote. The trial date is set for March 4. The Federal District Court judge overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, has been doing an admirable job of keeping it on track. But legal developments that are out of her hands now threaten to derail that schedule: Expected pretrial appeals could push the trial date past the November election.Mr. Trump has moved to dismiss the case on various grounds, including claims of presidential immunity and violation of the double jeopardy clause. For most pretrial motions, if the motion is denied, the defendant must wait to raise the issue again on appeal following conviction, if there is one.But these two motions fall into a narrow category of claims that usually entitle a defendant to an interlocutory appeal — in this case, an appeal before trial. Because these are claims of a constitutional right not to be tried at all, a post-conviction appeal is not an adequate remedy. By that time, the right has already been lost. A defendant is allowed to appeal such claims before the government may put him on trial.If, as expected, Judge Chutkan denies these motions, Mr. Trump will have a right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (I expect the appeals will focus primarily on the immunity claim; the double jeopardy argument seems frivolous.) If he loses before a three-judge panel there, he can ask the full court to review that decision. If that fails, he can ask the Supreme Court to review the case. While all that goes on, the trial cannot proceed.In a typical case, an appeals process like this could easily take a year or more. In the first prosecution of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, appeals over his claims of constitutional immunity under the speech or debate clause delayed the trial for about 18 months, even with the Supreme Court declining to take the case.In the Trump case, delays like that would push the trial well past November. If Mr. Trump wins the election, he would be able to shut down the two federal prosecutions and could probably have the state prosecutions at least postponed while he is in office.This appears to be the primary defense strategy in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases: delay as much as possible to put off any trials until after next November, when Mr. Trump hopes to be in a position to put an end to his legal problems.Having an election with Mr. Trump on the ballot and his criminal liability for Jan. 6 unresolved could spell disaster for the rule of law. It’s also completely avoidable if the courts — and in particularly, the judges who control the schedule — are willing to do what’s necessary: put the resolution of these motions on a fast track to ensure the case can go to trial as scheduled.Typically, the judicial and political calendars do not intersect. We expect judges to ignore political considerations and campaign schedules when making their decisions. But in times of political crisis, the federal judiciary cannot simply turn a blind eye. It must respond in a way that will enable the political system to address that crisis in a timely manner. This is one of those times.This is not a proposal for the courts to act in a partisan fashion. We don’t know whether Mr. Trump’s claim of immunity will be upheld. If it is rejected, we don’t know what the result of the trial will be. The outcome of the legal process is not the point. The point is that the country deserves to know that outcome before it chooses the next leader of the free world.There is precedent for this kind of judicial rapid response. During Watergate, the appeal of the order for President Nixon to turn over the subpoenaed White House tapes was resolved in only about two months — and that included arguments before and an opinion by the Supreme Court. During the 2000 presidential election, that court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore on Dec. 11 and the very next day issued its opinion shutting down the vote recount in Florida. The usually sedate appellate courts can move with dispatch when they want to.This case requires similar urgency. The initial appeals here could be easily heard and decided within a few weeks. Whether to grant a rehearing before the full Court of Appeals is discretionary, but if it does grant such a hearing, it needs to be equally speedy.After the District of Columbia Circuit rules, the losing party will seek Supreme Court review. If Mr. Trump loses the motions, my own hunch is that the Supreme Court may not take the case. In past disputes the justices have not shown much willingness to go out of their way to help Mr. Trump, and the last thing this embattled court needs right now is to wade into another controversy. But if the court does feel the need to weigh in on these novel constitutional issues, it also needs to move very swiftly.There’s no reason the entire process, including Supreme Court review, could not be completed by January. That would allow the trial date to stay on track if the motions are denied.There’s no concern about Mr. Trump being prejudiced by this relatively breakneck pace. He has vast financial and legal resources. The issues are already fully briefed before Judge Chutkan. The issues are novel — because nothing like Jan. 6 has happened before — but the questions are not extraordinarily complex; we need a rocket docket, but this is not rocket science.Some might argue that voters already have enough information about Mr. Trump’s actions and Jan. 6. But a criminal trial is different. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his allies made repeated claims of voter fraud and a “rigged” election. Those claims uniformly failed when tested in court by the adversary system, where actual evidence is required and witnesses testify under oath. In an age of disinformation and fake news, courts remain the arena where facts still matter.Some voters will not accept the verdict of a criminal trial, no matter what the outcome. But for many it could be a critical data point when casting their ballot.It’s already not possible to have the trial completed before most of the presidential primaries; Super Tuesday, with over a dozen primaries in states and territories across the country, is March 5. Mr. Trump could have the nomination sewn up by the time the trial is over. But the trial could easily be concluded before the Republican convention in July, so the delegates could decide whether they really want to nominate a felon (if that is the outcome) to lead the country.A functioning democracy requires an informed electorate. It’s hard to imagine a more important piece of information for voters to have next November than whether a candidate is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the last presidential election.Our legal system can resolve this case expeditiously while still protecting the defendant’s rights, but the judiciary will have to step up and do its part to protect democracy.Randall. D. Eliason is the former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He blogs at Sidebarsblog.com.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Colorado Supreme Court Agrees to Take Up Trump 14th Amendment Case

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      A state judge ruled last week that the former president had engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, but allowed him to remain on the ballot.The Colorado Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to take up an appeal of a state judge’s ruling allowing former President Donald J. Trump to remain on the state’s primary ballot, in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again.Plaintiffs, citing Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, argued that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection with his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But she allowed Mr. Trump to remain on the ballot anyway on the narrow grounds that the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the president of the United States.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said in a statement after Judge Wallace’s ruling last week that it was “another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.”The plaintiffs filed their appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday evening, and the court agreed to hear the case on an accelerated timetable. Mr. Trump’s lawyers must file a brief in the case by next Monday, and oral arguments are scheduled to begin on Dec. 6.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state and a Democrat, has previously said she would follow whatever ruling was in place on Jan. 5, 2024, the state’s deadline for certifying candidates on the ballot for the March 5 primary.Mario Nicolais, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the fast pace of the court schedule indicated that “the Supreme Court has taken this with the seriousness that it requires,” adding that “we are confident that we will come away from the Colorado Supreme Court with a victory and that he will be barred from being on the ballot.” More

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      House Speaker Mike Johnson Visits Trump at Mar-a-Lago

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      It was the speaker’s first trip to see the former president since he won his post, and it came as he faced anger from right-wing lawmakers for moving to fund the government.Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night visited former President Donald J. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to a person familiar with the meeting, making his first pilgrimage to see the Republican presidential front-runner since his surprise elevation to the top post in the House last month.The visit to Mr. Trump’s Florida home came at a tricky moment for the inexperienced speaker, who is already facing criticism from hard-right allies livid at him for teaming with Democrats last week to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown. The person confirmed the private meeting on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.Mr. Trump’s influence over spending fights in Washington may be limited, but Mr. Johnson’s decision to meet with him within weeks of his election is a sign he knows he cannot afford to have Mr. Trump weighing in publicly against him and hardening right-wing opposition to his leadership.Mr. Johnson has taken other steps to ingratiate himself to the far right and cement his hold on the gavel. Late last week, he announced he was publicly releasing surveillance video of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a step far-right lawmakers and activists have been demanding as they seek to undercut the facts about how supporters of Mr. Trump violently stormed the complex seeking to overturn his electoral defeat.Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, Republican congressional leaders have had to cultivate some kind of working relationship with him. But Mr. Johnson, who defended the former president in two Senate impeachment trials and played a lead role in trying to help him invalidate the 2020 election results, is positioning himself as the first speaker to be in complete lock step with the former president.The meeting at Mar-a-Lago was reported earlier by Punchbowl News.Last week, Mr. Johnson officially endorsed Mr. Trump — a move former Speaker Kevin McCarthy resisted even while proclaiming that the former president would be the Republican nominee and would be re-elected.“I endorsed him wholeheartedly for re-election in 2020, and traveled with his team as a campaign surrogate to help ensure his victory,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement to The New York Times. “I have fully endorsed him once again.”The endorsement came in response to a report by The Times that in 2015, Mr. Johnson had posted on social media saying that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015. “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”Mr. Johnson, who until last month never held a top-tier position in leadership, was in Florida for a fund-raising trip. He made a stop at Mar-a-Lago for an event for Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida, according to the person familiar with the meeting with Mr. Trump.A spokesman for Mr. Johnson did not provide additional information about the meeting. More

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      A Jan. 6 Defendant Pleads His Case to the Son Who Turned Him In

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      The trial was over and the verdict was in, but Brian Mock, 44, kept going back through the evidence, trying to make his case to the one person whose opinion he valued most. He sat at his kitchen table in rural Wisconsin next to his son, 21-year-old A.J. Mock, and opened a video on his laptop. He leaned into the screen and traced his finger over the image of the U.S. Capitol building, looked through clouds of tear gas and smoke and then pointed toward the center of a riotous crowd.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.“There. That’s me,” he said, pausing the video, zooming in on a man wearing a black jacket and a camouflaged hood who was shouting at a row of police officers. He pressed play and turned up the volume until the sound of chants and explosions filled the kitchen. “They stole it!” someone else yelled in the video. “We want our country back. Let’s take it. Come on!”A.J. shifted in his chair and looked down at his phone. He smoked from his vape and fiddled with a rainbow strap on his keychain that read “Love is love.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      The Axe Is Sharp

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      David Axelrod is not a prick.Truly.I’ve known him since 2007 and if I had to pick a noun to describe him, it would be mensch.So when President Biden privately employs that epithet for Axelrod, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, it’s bad for a few reasons.The ordinarily gracious president is punching down at the strategist who helped elevate him onto the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008 and who thinks he was “a great vice president” and has done a lot of wonderful things as president.When some in the Obama camp chattered in 2011 about switching Biden out for Hillary Clinton, Axelrod said, he protested: “That would be an incredible act of disloyalty to a guy who has done a great job for us.”Surely, Mr. Biden does not want to lower himself to the vulgarity of the growling, brawling, thieving Republicans in the Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of our Congress.(As Seth Meyers noted, George Santos — who spent campaign money on Hermès, Ferragamo, Botox, Sephora and OnlyFans — had “the shopping list of a 98-year-old oil tycoon’s 20-year-old wife.”)Axelrod drew Biden’s ire because he urged the president to consider stopping at one term, throwing open the race to younger Democrats while there’s still time, and leaving as a hero. He said that, despite Biden’s insult, he got a slew of messages agreeing with him.“I don’t care about them thinking I’m a prick — that’s fine,” the strategist told me. “I hope they don’t think the polls are wrong because they’re not.”According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Donald Trump is ahead in five battleground states and, as some other surveys have found, is even making inroads among Black voters and young voters. There’s a generational fracture in the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Hamas horror and Biden’s age. Third-party spoilers are circling.The president turns 81 on Monday; the Oval hollows out its occupants quickly, and Biden is dealing with two world-shattering wars, chaos at the border, a riven party and a roiling country.“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod said. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”The president’s flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.Like other pols, Biden has a healthy ego and like all presidents, he’s truculent about not getting the credit he thinks he deserves for his accomplishments. And it must be infuriating that most of the age qualms are about him, when Trump is only a few years younger.No doubt the president is having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that the 77-year-old Mar-a-Lago Dracula has risen from his gilded coffin even though he’s albatrossed with legal woes and seems more deranged than ever, referring to Democrats with the fascist-favored term “vermin” and plotting a second-term revengefest. Trump’s campaign slogan should be, “There will be blood.”For Biden, this is about his identity. It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office.But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time it helped get him to No. 1 and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and that’s all he cares about. In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump gloated about how his audience on Jan. 6 was “the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of by far.”Never mind that it was one of the most dangerous, shameful days in our history. To Trump, it was glorious.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Judge Rejects Trump Motion to Strike Jan. 6 Mentions From Federal Election Case

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      The ruling was a step toward allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence at trial that members of the mob that stormed the Capitol believed they were acting at Donald Trump’s instruction.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election rejected on Friday a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to remove language from his indictment describing the role he played in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The ruling by the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, was an initial step toward allowing prosecutors in the case to introduce evidence at trial that members of the mob that stormed the Capitol that day believed they were acting at Mr. Trump’s instruction.Last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to strike any mention of the riot at the Capitol from the 45-page indictment filed against him this summer in Federal District Court in Washington. The lawyers argued that since none of the four charges in the case explicitly accused Mr. Trump of inciting the violence that day, any reference to the mob attack would be prejudicial and irrelevant.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, shot back that even if they had not filed formal incitement charges, the riot would be instrumental in their efforts to prove one of their central allegations: that Mr. Trump had plotted to obstruct the certification of the election that was taking place at a proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6.In court papers to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors called the Jan. 6 attack “the culmination” of Mr. Trump’s “criminal conspiracies” to overturn the election. They also suggested that they were poised to introduce video evidence of the riot and call witnesses at trial who could testify that they attacked police and stormed the Capitol after hearing Mr. Trump exhort them to “fight” in a speech he gave before the violence broke out.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested that they will try in a future motion to keep Mr. Smith’s team from introducing evidence like that at the trial. If the lawyers end up taking that route, Judge Chutkan will have to make another ruling about whether the evidence is relevant and not prejudicial.Her decision to keep the references to the riot in the indictment came on the same day that a group of news organizations reiterated a request to televise the trial.Lawyers for the news organizations said Mr. Trump had sought to challenge the “very legitimacy” of the case, and they argued that a live broadcast was needed so people could view the trial firsthand.“Of all trials conducted throughout American history, this one needs the public trust that only a televised proceeding can foster,” lawyers for the organizations wrote.The nine-page brief by the media outlets — The New York Times, among them — was the last round of court papers expected to be filed to Judge Chutkan before she rules on whether to allow cameras at the trial, which is scheduled to begin in March.Lawyers for Mr. Trump, in a combative and misleading filing last week, compared the election interference case to “a trial in an authoritarian regime.” They told Judge Chutkan that it should be televised so that the public did not have to “rely on biased, secondhand accounts coming from the Biden administration and its media allies.”Within days, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel fired back that broadcasting the proceeding would not only violate longstanding federal rules of criminal procedure, but would also allow Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, to turn the trial into “a media event” with a “carnival atmosphere.”Lawyers for the media coalition said in their filing on Friday that it was “naïve to think that Trump’s trial will be anything other than a ‘media event.’”But the lawyers said that if the proceeding were broadcast live — in a “dignified, carefully managed” manner — it would permit the public to “see this trial firsthand” after Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked the government’s case as an act of pure political persecution.“The media coalition believes that the more people who see the trial in real time, the stronger the case for public acceptance of the result,” the lawyers wrote.The judge who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s trial in Fulton County, Ga., on local charges of tampering with that state’s election has already televised several key hearings and has vowed to broadcast the trial itself, which could take place as early as next summer. (Prosecutors in Georgia filed a motion seeking an Aug. 5 start date on Friday, though the presiding judge will ultimately set the trial date.)But the federal courts have stricter rules about cameras in the courtroom, and Judge Chutkan would have to set them aside to allow her trial to be broadcast live. More

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      Prosecutors Assail Trump’s Bid to Have Federal Election Case Dismissed

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      Prosecutors said that Mr. Trump’s barrage of motions to have the case tossed out were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, went one by one through Mr. Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct, — sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity,” James I. Pearce, one of the prosecutors, wrote, “when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans.”When Mr. Trump first filed his motions to dismiss the case, they represented a breathtaking effort to reframe the various steps he took to remain in power after losing the election as something other than crimes.For example, Mr. Trump sought to portray his repeated efforts to use false claims that the election had been stolen as “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He similarly tried to recast his lies about the election as “opinions” that he tried to use to build support for his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the results of the race.But Mr. Pearce shot back on Monday for the Justice Department, saying that the First Amendment did not protect “criminal conduct” like using lies in a plot to defeat the will of the voters. He also wrote that Mr. Trump’s efforts to recast the meaning of the special counsel’s indictment in his own favor were “based on an inaccurate and self-serving characterization of the charges.”In a separate motion, Thomas P. Windom, another prosecutor on the case, rejected Mr. Trump’s arguments that the charges should be dismissed because they are part of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”As part of their flurry of filings last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to paint the election interference case as “a retaliatory response” by President Biden to go after Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.The lawyers made those accusations even though the indictment had been brought by Mr. Smith, an independent special counsel, and after an extensive grand jury investigation.Mr. Windom responded to the claims by noting they were “spurious” and “contrived from two newspaper articles citing anonymous sources.” Appearing to get his back up, he also mounted an angry defense of his colleagues on Mr. Smith’s team.“The special counsel and career prosecutors in the special counsel’s office collectively have served in the Department of Justice for decades,” Mr. Windom wrote. “They have sworn oaths to support and defend the Constitution, and they have faithfully executed their prosecutorial duties in this case.”As part of his selective prosecution claims, Mr. Trump had argued that even though he was not the first candidate in U.S. history to have created alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College in an effort to win an election, he was the only one to have suffered criminal charges for having done so.Mr. Windom acknowledged that alternate slates had indeed been sparingly used going back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. But he maintained that “none of the historical examples the defendant points to involved deceitful and corrupt efforts” to “block the certification of the legitimate results of a presidential election.”In yet a third filing, prosecutors rebuffed Mr. Trump’s attempt to strike from the indictment any mention of the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As part of their motions to dismiss, his lawyers had asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to remove all references to the Capitol attack from the case given that none of the charges explicitly accuses Mr. Trump of inciting the mob of his supporters that stormed the building.But writing for the government, Molly Gaston, a prosecutor in Mr. Smith’s office, asserted that Mr. Trump was “responsible for the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6” despite the lack of an incitement charge and that evidence about the attack was instrumental to the government’s case.“That day was the culmination of the defendant’s criminal conspiracies to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election,” Ms. Gaston wrote.The series of filings on Monday was the second time Mr. Smith’s office has rebutted Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election case thrown out before it goes to trial. Last month, they assailed his initial motion to dismiss, rejecting sweeping claims that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the indictment arose from actions he took while in the White House.Last week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to put the case on hold entirely as she considered the immunity claims — another example of the former president’s long-running efforts to delay the proceeding for as long as possible.On Monday, Ms. Gaston asked Judge Chutkan to deny the request to pause the case.“The defendant has an established record of attempting to disrupt and delay the court’s carefully considered trial date and pretrial schedule,” she wrote. “Now the defendant has timed his motion to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect.” More

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      Trump 14th Amendment Disqualification Trial: What to Know About the Colorado Case

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      The lawsuit in Denver is one of several across the country arguing that former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible to hold office again.The continued existence of former President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 campaign is being litigated this week in an unassuming courtroom in Colorado.The trial stems from a lawsuit brought by voters in the state who argue that Mr. Trump is ineligible to hold office under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution because of his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. And the Colorado disqualification case isn’t isolated. Oral arguments stemming from a similar suit, in Minnesota, were held on Thursday.Here is a look at the Colorado case and beyond.What is the background on the Colorado lawsuit?It was filed in September in a state district court in Denver by six Colorado voters — four Republicans and two independents — who are suing with the help of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.These voters argue that Mr. Trump’s presence on the Republican primary ballot next year would harm them by siphoning support from their preferred candidates and, if he won the nomination, by depriving them of the ability “to vote for a qualified candidate in the general election.”They are demanding that the Colorado secretary of state not print Mr. Trump’s name on the ballot, and are asking the court to rule that Mr. Trump is disqualified in order to end any “uncertainty.”What is the 14th Amendment, and what does it say?The Colorado case specifically concerns Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says:No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.The central questions are whether the 14th Amendment applies to the presidency; whether Mr. Trump’s behavior before and on Jan. 6 constitutes “engaging in insurrection or rebellion against” the Constitution; and whether election officials or the courts can deem a person ineligible under Section 3 without specific action by Congress identifying that person.Constitutional experts have emphasized in interviews with The New York Times that the answers to these questions are not simple or self-evident.In public writings, some scholars have argued that Mr. Trump is ineligible. In an academic article, the conservative law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen concluded: “It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction.” Others have argued the opposite, with the law professors Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman saying in a recent draft paper that they see “no sound basis” for Mr. Baude’s and Mr. Paulsen’s conclusions.What is the plaintiffs’ side saying?From Monday through Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs — the six Colorado voters — called seven witnesses:Daniel Hodges, a Washington, D.C., police officer, and Winston Pingeon, a Capitol Police officer, who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6. They testified that rioters had come equipped with tactical gear and had made it clear that they believed themselves to be acting on Mr. Trump’s behalf. On cross-examination, lawyers for Mr. Trump sought to distance him from the rioters, noting that the officers could not know that any individual rioter had heard his speech.Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, who said lawmakers had read Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts during the attack and saw them as connected “to our own safety in the chamber and also the integrity of the proceedings.” On cross-examination, lawyers for Mr. Trump quoted Mr. Swalwell’s own Twitter post urging Democrats to “fight” against abortion restrictions and asked if that was a call for violence; Mr. Swalwell said no.William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University and an expert on presidential authority in national security. He testified that Mr. Trump could have deployed National Guard troops without a request or permission from local officials.Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University and an expert on political extremism. He testified that the far right used “doublespeak” — language that insiders understood to be calling for violence but that maintained plausible deniability. For years, he said, Mr. Trump built credibility with members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, such that they saw him as an ally speaking to them in that way.Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University and an expert on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. He said that when the amendment was ratified, “insurrection” was understood to refer to “any public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the execution of the law,” and “engaged” meant “any voluntary act in furtherance of an insurrection, including words of incitement.”Hilary Rudy, a deputy elections director in the Colorado secretary of state’s office. She testified that the secretary of state had a legal obligation to grant ballot access only to qualified candidates, that courts could play a legitimate role in determining who was qualified, and that the office would abide by whatever the court decided.The plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to call one additional witness Friday afternoon.What is Trump’s side saying?As of Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Trump had called six witnesses:Kashyap Patel, a former chief of staff at the Defense Department. He testified that Mr. Trump had pre-emptively authorized the deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 National Guard troops to keep the peace on Jan. 6, and that they were absent because the mayor of Washington had not requested them. Under cross-examination, Mr. Patel said he did not know of any document showing Mr. Trump’s authorization.Katrina Pierson, a former spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, who described internal disagreements over who should speak at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. She testified that Mr. Trump nixed most of the planned speakers, including the most incendiary ones. She also said he had expressed a desire for 10,000 National Guard troops.Amy Kremer, an organizer of the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse, called the rally attendees “freedom-loving citizens” and “happy warriors,” and said she had seen no indication of violence or violent intent while Mr. Trump was speaking. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that she had been inside the area that required magnetometer scans, and that she would not have seen anything that happened outside that area.Thomas Van Flein, general counsel and chief of staff to Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona. He testified that the rally crowd was peaceful, but acknowledged that he had left before Mr. Trump spoke.Tom Bjorklund, who is the treasurer of the Colorado Republican Party but testified as a private citizen, attended Mr. Trump’s speech and then went to the Capitol, where he witnessed the riot but did not enter the building himself. He said in the first part of his testimony that he had not seen any violence from Trump supporters. Later, he said he had watched people break windows, but advanced the conspiracy theory that it was a false-flag operation by “antifa.” He also said he had understood Mr. Trump’s “instructions” to be for peaceful protest.Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, testified that he believed the Jan. 6 committee’s report — which the plaintiffs have frequently cited as evidence in their case — was one-sided in its assessment of Mr. Trump’s “culpability” in the attack.Mr. Trump’s team plans to call one more witness Friday morning: an expert who will offer a different interpretation from Professor Magliocca’s of the wording in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.What has the judge said?Before the trial began on Monday, Mr. Trump’s team made several motions to dismiss the case. Judge Sarah B. Wallace, who is overseeing the trial, rejected them.On Wednesday, after the plaintiffs had finished calling most of their witnesses, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested a “directed verdict” — a conclusion, before the defense had called any witnesses, that no legally sufficient basis existed for the plaintiffs to prevail. They argued that even if the plaintiffs’ claims were accepted as fact, that would not legally justify disqualifying Mr. Trump. His words, they said, did not meet the Supreme Court’s standard for incitement and therefore were protected by the First Amendment.Judge Wallace denied the request, but emphasized that her denial should not be construed as a ruling on the legal questions involved — including whether Mr. Trump had “engaged in insurrection” as the 14th Amendment meant that phrase, and whether the First Amendment limited how the 14th could be applied.Rather, she said she was denying the request because in order to grant it, “I would have to decide many legal issues that I am simply not prepared to decide today.”What happens next?It is not clear how long it will take for Judge Wallace to rule after the trial ends on Friday.However, the trial is being conducted under an expedited process with the goal of having a final resolution before a January deadline for the Colorado secretary of state to certify who is on the primary ballot — and everyone involved understands that her initial ruling needs to come with enough time for appeals to be resolved, too.The United States Supreme Court is expected to have the final say.Chris Cameron More