Left-leaning CNN was not kind to Donald Trump during his four-year term as president, but the network proved this week that it can be fair to him.
Network legal expert and analyst Elie Honig took the former president’s side in criticizing a ruling this week by the Colorado Supreme Court to bar Trump’s name from appearing on the state’s 2024 election ballots under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection” clause, even though he has not been charged with that crime, much less convicted of it.
“I think the Supreme Court is going to take this case, and I think the [U.S.] Supreme Court is going to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court,” Honig said during a segment on Wednesday.
“I halfway agree with [co-guest Robert Ray]; I halfway disagree with Bob,” Honig began. “I disagree with him on whether the term ‘an officer of the United States’ includes the president. There’s sort of linguistic exercises you can do either way, but I think it’s worth noting all seven justices didn’t have a problem with all officers of the United States, including the president.
“And also just logically, if you’re gonna have a provision in the Constitution that says anyone who engages in insurrection can’t serve for future office, it would be bizarre if the highest office was exempt from that,” Honig continued.
He added, however, “I do agree with Bob that we have a serious due process problem here because the 14th Amendment itself says that Congress — in Section 5 — Congress has to pass laws that tell us how this works, who gets to decide who engaged in insurrection. Is it a court? Is it Congress? Is it a jury? Is it a judge?”
“The only law that’s still on the books, as Bob said, that Congress has ever passed is the criminal law, criminalizing insurrection, which specifically says if a person is charged and convicted with this, he’s disqualified. That has not happened here,” he noted further.
Concluding, he said: “Instead, Colorado tried to sort of take this state-level proceeding that’s not really made for this type of insurrection determination and force a square peg into a round hole, and I think that violates Donald Trump’s due process rights, and I think the U.S. Supreme Court’s gonna reverse because of that.”
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