No matter how you slice it, good or bad news, Trump continues to command the headlines. It seems to make no difference to his base or GOP members that he faces four trials and more than 90 felony charges; he remains the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nominee, and by a considerable margin.
Even so, the former president’s fate hangs in the balance because he is being gagged by Judge Tanya Chutkan for criticizing prosecutors and, in several states, including Colorado and Minnesota, possibly disqualified from securing the White House again.
On Monday in a hearing in Colorado, attorneys began oral arguments alleging that Trump violated the Constitution’s insurrection clause for his role in the January 6 turmoil at the U.S. Capitol. A similar hearing is slated to take place in Minnesota.
At the crux of the two lawsuits is Trump’s violation of a clause that was instituted after the Civil War to prevent former Confederates from holding office after they had pledged to support the Constitution. Whether such a measure applies to the president will be a centerpiece in the case. Trump’s defense team has challenged the lawsuit, at first on the grounds of freedom of speech and then that it could not be litigated against the president.
According to attorney Eric Olson, Trump’s rhetoric encouraged the crowd to storm the Capitol and “summoned and organized the mob. We are here because Trump claims, after all that, that he has the right to be president again. But our Constitution, the shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so.”
How the case plays out, no matter what side wins, we can expect appeals, and in the end, should it land for the Supreme Court to decide, that outcome is almost certainly to favor Trump.