Trump's campaign wouldn't comment, but his attorneys pushed the justices to proceed. “The Court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado's lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” Trump's lawyers
Donald Sherman, the ballot challenge group's lead lawyer, said voters and election authorities need a response immediately.
And I think, obviously, voters have a not small interest in knowing whether the Supreme Court thinks, as every fact-finder that has reached this question, that Jan. 6 was an insurrection and that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist,” Sherman told The Associated Press. Executive vice president and principal legal counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The sole remaining justice who participated in Bush v. Gore is Clarence Thomas. That majority included him. However, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett supported Bush in court. Bush named Roberts chief justice after putting him on a federal appeals court. Kavanaugh had key White House positions before Bush appointed him an appellate judge. Trump nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Thomas has rejected requests from Democratic legislators and ethics academics to drop down from the case. They said his wife, Ginni Thomas, backed Trump's 2020 election overthrow. In the weeks after the election, Ginni Thomas contacted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, calling it a “heist,” and she attended the rally before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. She told the congressional committee probing the incident over two years later that she regretted sending the texts.
Trump lost 60 legal cases over his baseless allegations of rampant voter fraud that would have swung the election. Supreme Court ruled frequently against Trump and his supporters in 2020 election-related litigation and his efforts to hide Jan. 6 and tax return records from congressional committees.
However, Trump's conservative majority has reversed the 5-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, strengthened gun rights, and abolished college admissions affirmative action.
Trump's ballot eligibility is one of numerous Jan. 6 or past president-related high court cases. Special counsel Jack Smith asked the justices to rule quickly on Trump's assertions that he is exempt from prosecution, but a Washington appeals court might bring the matter back before the court. An appeal in April may overturn hundreds of Capitol riot charges, including against Trump.
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