A court hearing begins on Monday in Colorado to remove former US President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential election because of the attack on the Capitol, Reuters reports.
Trump faces similar lawsuits filed by advocacy groups in Michigan and Minnesota, but the Colorado case is the first to go to trial.
The former president denies charges of storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by his supporters who wanted to prevent Congress from confirming Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 presidential election.
According to opinion polls, Trump is the favourite to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination and plans to compete with Biden again next year. Opponents hope to prevent Trump from running by disqualifying him in some states, but many legal experts are convinced that such a move will fail.
The Colorado lawsuit seeks to prohibit the state’s top election official from placing Trump on the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment was passed after the Civil War to prevent former Confederate rebels from holding federal office.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the human rights group that filed the lawsuit, claimed Trump “incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection” by urging his supporters to march on the Capitol and prevent Biden’s victory from being confirmed.
Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace rejected five separate motions by Trump and his allies to dismiss the case. On 25 October, she rejected Trump’s arguments that courts had no power to determine eligibility for office.
In his campaign for the presidency, Trump faces several court cases, including fraud charges in a New York state lawsuit against Trump and his family company, which is now in its fourth week, and charges of mishandling classified government documents when he left office in January 2021.
