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Also, as I understand it, Colorado's case is based on a Republican-led Originalist reading of the relevant law, which is exactly what the conservative justices who lead the court have staked their entire careers on, and is pretty open-and-shut obviously correct on that reading.
They may well abandon all their claimed principles and make an activist ruling of some type, but I think people are too confident that they will. I think people assume that because what Colorado is doing seems surprising and weird and motivated it must de facto have no strong basis in law, but I think that's just not true.
It certainly is not open and shut obviously correct. The 14th amendment states "that anyone who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the US], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof" is ineligible to hold office. Trump has not done any of those things. He has not remotely done any of those things.
He's certainly given aid and comfort, the question is whether the people he gave aid and comfort to were insurrectionists.
No, if there were a legitimate question here, it would be whether the people he gave aid and comfort to were "enemies thereof", that is, enemies of the United States. Insurrectionists would not necessarily be enemies of the United States. As far as I know, no state of war existed between the rioters and the United States, so the narrowest definition is not fulfilled.
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I don't really agree with that but even if we accept your premise, it seems pretty obvious to me that the rioters are not "enemies of the United States" (which is what the text says he would've had to give aid and comfort to). They are citizens who were trying to effect what they saw as positive change for the country, not trying to undermine it.
I mean were the Confederates not that? Most people believe that what they are doing is for a good cause. That's certainly never been a criminal defense in any other situation, AFAIK.
Also I'm not sure it matters what the average useful idiot on the frontline thought, if it was being organized and armed by people with a different motive. If there was a plot by anyone to defraud the election, even if it's only a minority of organizers behind the overall movement, that's still a set of insurrectionists that were aided and comforted.
It was definitely an armed invasion of the capital while votes for President were being counted with the intention of disrupting that process, in which legislators were evacuted by security and held in a secure location, in which property was damaged and stolen, in which people were injured and killed.
People were prosecuted and imprisoned for an assault on the capital, that kinda feels like the legal system views them as enemies of the state. However you feel about it personally, it was a pretty big deal and the legal system obviously takes it more seriously.
No. No it was not. It was a protest which got out of hand into a riot.
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Especially given that insurrection would seemingly be informed by the civil war
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