CNN Legal Analyst Lauds Ruling in Trump’s Favor in Insurrection Case

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig lauded a Colorado judge’s ruling on Friday that former President Donald Trump must be on the ballot in 2024.

Colorado Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that while the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot did “easily satisfy” the definition of an insurrection, the 14th Amendment’s ban on the election of officials who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” did not apply to Trump, as the passage does not explicitly mention the presidency.

“To lump the Presidency in with any other civil or military office is odd indeed and very troubling to the Court because as Intervenors point out, Section Three explicitly lists all federal elected positions except the President and Vice President,” Wallace noted.

Asked by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper whether the ruling was what he had expected, Honig also noted that vagueness of the text:

It is, Anderson, and I think we’ve discussed this on air. The fundamental reason these lawsuits keep failing is because we simply don’t know how this works. We don’t have a process in place. Yes, the 14th Amendment tells us anybody who engages in insurrection is disqualified. That’s important. The problem is in the 150 years or so since that was passed, neither the Constitution, nor the Supreme Court, nor Congress has given us any guidance as to how it works.

And what we cannot do, we collectively, is invent a process now on the fly and then apply it retroactively because that would violate the 14th Amendment’s due process provision. And I think this is why, Anderson, we’ve seen now every official who’s considered this, Republican and Democratic, state secretaries of state, and now four different judges, including Democratic nominees who have all ruled against these motions, who have all ruled in favor of Trump, but all for different reasons, because we simply don’t have a procedure in place for how this works.

Honig did say, however, that the judge’s ruling that Trump engaged in an insurrection was legally significant in Trump’s ongoing Washington, D.C. indictment.

“I think it does matter legally,” he told Cooper. “It’s important both sort of politically and atmospherically, but also legally as well.”

Watch above via CNN.