Watchdog grouphas filed a lawsuit to remove former President Donald Trump from the presidential ballot in 2024.
Earlier this month, Washington D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters in Colorado in an effort to block Trump from the 2024 ballot.
The lawsuit alleges that the former president violated the oath of office by “recruiting, inciting and encouraging a violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a futile attempt to remain in office.”
“If the very fabric of our democracy is to hold, we must ensure that the Constitution is enforced and the same people who attacked our democratic system not be put in charge of it,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.
“We aren’t bringing this case to make a point, we’re bringing it because it is necessary to defend our republic both today and in the future,” he continued. “While it is unprecedented to bring this type of case against a former president, January 6th was an unprecedented attack that is exactly the kind of event the framers of the 14th Amendment wanted to build protections in case of. You don’t break the glass unless there’s an emergency.”
The group referred to a New Mexico case last year where the CREW also filed a lawsuit to keep Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin from office. They noted that the judge in that case declared the Jan. 6 riot an insurrection as defined by the Constitution and that “someone who helped to incite it — even if not personally — had engaged in insurrection and was disqualified from office.”
“While the stakes surrounding Donald Trump’s disqualification in Colorado are greater than in the Griffin case, the law and many underlying facts are the same,” CREW wrote. “Based on its laws, the calendar, and our courageous set of plaintiffs and witnesses, Colorado is a good venue to bring this first case, but it will not be the last.”
This comes as Trump’s political enemies are looking to remove him from the presidential ballot using the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. Section 3 of the Amendment says that public officials are not eligible to hold office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S.
