'Most historic constitutional case' in history: Conservative judge details 'precarious' SCOTUS ruling

08 February 2024

This Thursday, February 8, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson — an historic case that will decide "whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Donald Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot," according to SCOTUSblog.

Citing Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is disqualified from its ballot because of his actions following the 2020 presidential election. Section 3 states that an "officer" who has engaged in "insurrection" is ineligible for certain government positions.

Trump and his loyalists have been attacking the Colorado ruling as a partisan Democratic conspiracy against him, but in fact, one of the top proponents of the argument that Section 3 makes Trump ineligible to run for president in 2024 is conservative Republican J. Michael Luttig — a retired federal judge and a prominent figure in right-wing legal circles.

Luttig discussed the case during a Thursday morning, February 8 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," emphasizing that the Roberts Court is facing intense political pressure in Trump v. Anderson.

Luttig told "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski and MSNBC's Willie Geist, "The argument today will be historic. This case is probably the most historic constitutional and political case in all of American history. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is the safety net, the Constitution's safety net, for American democracy. And it's as if the framers of Section 3 foresaw January 6, 2021, and they provided in Section 3 that America would never experience another January 6."

The conservative legal expert added, "If Section 3 doesn't disqualify the former president, then, in my view, it would not disqualify any person at all. That is to say that the Supreme Court finds itself in a very precarious position today. Undoubtedly, it doesn't want to decide this case, and it will be looking for all legitimate offramps to decide that the former president is disqualified. But there are no legitimate offramps to that decision."

Luttig predicted that the Roberts Court will be "pluming all possibilities…. as to how the Court can resolve the case without deciding whether the former president is disqualified."

Luttig told Brzezinski and Geist, "There is no question whatsoever that the former president engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution when he attempted to remain in power beyond his constitutional term of four years and denied President Joe Biden the powers of the presidency to which he was entitled, having won the election by a vote of the American people. And all of this prevented the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history…. That is the only legal issue, but there are such massive political consequences that although the Supreme Court ought not consider those, undoubtedly they will consider them."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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