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To: thinden
"Trump’s recent Petition for Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court does not discuss the timeline issue."

The reason it's not in the Petition for Cert is obvious, you'd be arguing the Prosecution's kangaroo court trial for Insurrection.

That's not where the Constitutional argument is. The Constitutional argument is that the Colorado Supreme Court has attempted to create a Bill of Attainder against President Trump that not only did they have no right to do so, but they should be made to answer for it.

Justice Samour's remarkable Dissent at least nails the former, that his Court had no Constitutional right to create a Bill of Attainder:

JUSTICE SAMOUR dissenting.

Now it is undoubted that those provisions of the constitution which deny to the legislature power to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, or to pass a bill of attainder or an ex post facto, are inconsistent in their spirit and general purpose with a provision which, at once without trial, deprives a whole class of persons of offices . . . for cause, however grave. - In re Griffin, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (C.C.D. Va. 1869) (No. 5,815) (“Griffin’s Case”).

"These astute words, uttered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase a century and a half ago, eloquently describe one of the bedrock principles of American democracy: Our government cannot deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law. Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past — dare I say, engaged in insurrection — there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office. Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart.

The decision to bar former President Donald J. Trump (“President Trump”) — by all accounts the current leading Republican presidential candidate (and reportedly the current leading overall presidential candidate) — from Colorado’s presidential primary ballot flies in the face of the due process doctrine.

By concluding that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is self-executing, the majority approves the enforcement of that federal constitutional provision by our state courts through the truncated procedural mechanism that resides in our state Election Code.

Thus, based on its interpretation of Section Three, our court sanctions these makeshift proceedings employed by the district court below — which lacked basic discovery, the ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, workable timeframes to adequately investigate and develop defenses, and the opportunity for a fair trial — to adjudicate a federal constitutional claim (a complicated one at that) masquerading as a run-of-the-mill state Election Code claim.

And because most other states don’t have the Election Code provisions we do, they won’t be able to enforce Section Three. That, in turn, will inevitably lead to the disqualification of President Trump from the presidential primary ballot in less than all fifty states, thereby risking chaos in our country.

This can’t possibly be the outcome the framers intended.

... procedures that must be followed to determine whether someone has engaged in insurrection after taking the prerequisite oath. That is, it sheds no light on whether a jury must be empaneled or a bench trial will suffice, the proper burdens of proof and standards of review, the application of discovery and evidentiary rules, or even whether civil or criminal proceedings are contemplated.

This dearth of procedural guidance is not surprising: Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment specifically gives Congress absolute power to enact legislation to enforce Section Three. My colleagues in the majority concede that there is currently no legislation enacted by Congress to enforce Section Three.

This is of no moment to them, however, because they conclude that Section Three is self-executing, and that the states are free to apply their own procedures (including compressed ones in an election code) to enforce it.

That is hard for me to swallow."


5 posted on 02/05/2024 10:36:29 AM PST by StAnDeliver (TrumpII)
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To: StAnDeliver

thanx for adding Justice Samour’s remarkable Dissent to this conversation.


6 posted on 02/05/2024 10:39:42 AM PST by thinden (buckle up ....)
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