Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) pushed back on Donald Trump after the former president argued that an effort to use the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause to keep him off the ballot in 2024 was “election interference.”
“Trump is a liar with no respect for the Constitution,” Griswold told MSNBC on Saturday.
“To say that a section of the 14th Amendment is election interference and considering how to uphold the Constitution is election interference is un-American,” she added. “We know that the former president is a liar who will do everything he can to hold onto power.”
Griswold remarks come as six voters — four of them Republicans and two unaffiliated — in Colorado filed a lawsuit spearheaded by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington last week. The suit seeks to remove Trump from the state’s 2024 election ballots citing his role in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection. The voters argue that the former president should be disqualified from the upcoming election under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that no person shall hold any office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after having taken an oath to support the Constitution.
In response to the lawsuit, Trump went on one of his usual rants, calling the effort “election interference.”
“This is like a banana republic,” Trump told right-wing radio host Dan Bongino on Thursday. “And what they’re doing is, it’s called election interference. … Now the 14th Amendment is just a continuation of that.”
Meanwhile, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung also took a shot at the plaintiffs, calling them “people who are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump.”
They “are stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and DC,” he added. “There is no legal basis for this effort except in the minds of those who are pushing it.”
As the Trump campaign pushed back on the effort in the media, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion, asking the court to move the lawsuit to federal court.
“This case arises under the 14th Amendment. Although Plaintiffs have drafted their Verified Petition in a manner that ostensibly relies on state claims, in fact every state claim — indeed every effort to bar Trump from running for President — relies solely on the application of U.S. Const. 14th Amend, Sec. 3,” Trump wrote in his filing.
Just a day later, realizing they do not have standing to move this case to federal court, Trump lawyers filed a new motion stating they are not opposing the case’s return to state court.
