“The actions of Colorado and Maine, and other states that follow suit are not only doomed to legal failure, they also embolden and empower the former president,” says former Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday.
Barr added in his op-ed for The Free Press, “Trump feeds on grievance like fire feeds on oxygen.”
The former attorney general emphasized that the efforts to disqualify him on state ballots are “legally untenable, politically counterproductive and ominously destructive of our political order.” He called on the Supreme Court to immediately overturn these “foolish” decisions.
In December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump should be out of the state’s ballot, upholding a decision already made by the lower court, for supposedly “engaging in insurrection.” The state SC cited the Fourteenth Amendment and emphasized that the MAGA leader violated these and is, therefore, disqualified from serving again as president.
Maine’s secretary of state Shenna Bellows, who only used the Colorado SC as her reference, followed suit.
Barr however contradicted this move and said, “As a legal matter, states do not have the power to enforce the disqualification provision of the Fourteenth Amendment by using their own ad hoc procedures to find that an individual has engaged in an insurrection.”
He emphasized that the Department of Justice has not found Trump engaging in insurrection, nor are they investigating him for such.
Barr also highlighted that the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment is inapplicable to the former president as he “has not been tried in court and found guilty” of such acts.
“There has to be a fair fact-finding procedure before someone can be branded an insurrectionist.”
“But what should that process be? The Fourteenth Amendment is silent on this. The terms “insurrection” and “engaging” are mushy. When does a public disturbance become an insurrection and when does an individual’s level of involvement amount to “engagement”? What is the standard of proof required?”
He added that Trump should be afforded due process before the government deprives him of an essential right, which Colorado and Maine failed to do so.
He called Colorado SC’s decision a “procedural Frankenstein” and that both states did not even give Trump a “jury, the ability to cross-examine the evidence introduced against him, or the ability to subpoena witnesses.”
Barr also declared that much of the evidence presented against the leading Republican primary candidate is hearsay or conclusory statements from congressional hearings that “did not allow for an adversarial process.”
The former attorney general clarified that he doesn’t want Trump to get the GOP nomination but maintained his stance that “he has to be beaten at the ballot box—not by subverting the basic systems of our democracy.”
William Barr served as Trump’s attorney general from 2019 to 2020.
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