Trump judge says she can’t remember ActBlue contribution
Byron York
TRUMP JUDGE SAYS SHE CAN’T REMEMBER ACTBLUE CONTRIBUTION. It can be hard to keep up with all the legal actions against former President Donald Trump. It’s not just the highest-profile cases; anti-Trump lawyers are swarming courtrooms across the country suing Trump or charging him with wrongdoing or petitioning to have him removed from 2024 ballots. No matter how frivolous, each case has the potential to blow up into something that could damage Trump’s current campaign. Of course, with many of them, that’s the point.
The latest case to go to trial is a lawsuit initiated by the Washington, D.C.-based anti-Trump and anti-Republican group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which seeks to have Trump removed from the 2024 ballot in Colorado. CREW recruited six local plaintiffs to bring suit in state court in Denver. The suit is based on recent legal theorizing that the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running for president because he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the U.S. Constitution]” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Any decision to remove Trump based on this thinking would have to conclude that 1) the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an “insurrection” and 2) that Trump “engaged” in the insurrection or gave “aid or comfort” to the enemies of the U.S. Constitution.
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That might seem kind of a leap — some distinguished legal scholars think it’s a dangerously bad idea — but the theory’s proponents say the disqualification is actually “self-enacting,” that is, that it’s already done and does not require any judge or legislature to take Trump out of the 2024 election. State election officials can simply remove Trump’s name from the presidential ballot, and that will be that. So far, the anti-Trump activists have not found a state secretary of state who is willing to do it on his or her own.
It’s not for lack of sympathy with the anti-Trump cause. For example, the secretary of state of Colorado, Jena Griswold, has said she will wait for the verdict in the lawsuit. But Griswold, an elected Democrat, recently left no doubt where she stands on the matter. Appearing on CNN last week to address Trump’s charge that the lawsuit constitutes “election interference,” Griswold said, “Bringing a lawsuit to determine whether a potential candidate is disqualified by very clear language of the U.S. Constitution is not election interference. It’s living in a society that believes in rule of law.” Having the issue decided by a judge, Griswold continued, “is how American democracy should work.” And then: “How [American democracy] should not work is an insurrection, or a fake scheme incited by a president to try to put forward fake electors. How this country should not work is a sitting president trying to steal the election from the American people.”
You get the idea. So now, the lawsuit is underway. And as Griswold said, it will be decided by a judge. There is no jury; the presiding judge, Sarah Wallace, will issue a ruling in the case. And it turns out the judge might be just as biased as Griswold. As the trial began, it came to light that Wallace is a longtime small contributor to Democratic campaigns and causes.
Wallace was a lawyer in private practice in Denver when, on Aug. 18, 2022, Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) appointed her to a seat on the state district court. She took the seat on Jan. 10, 2023. Before her appointment, Wallace had contributed $250 to Jena Griswold; $500 to Phil Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado; $200 to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper; and more. All of those contributions occurred before she was nominated for the bench.
On Nov. 10, 2022, after she was nominated but before she took office, Wallace donated $100 to the Democratic fundraising site ActBlue earmarked for the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock in Georgia. A few weeks earlier, on Oct. 15, 2022, again after her nomination, Wallace sent $100 to ActBlue earmarked for a group called the Colorado Turnout Project. The organization says its goal is to eliminate Republicans currently in national office from Colorado and “turn Colorado blue once and for all.” It was founded, the group’s website says, “after Colorado Republicans refused to condemn the political extremists who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” and it intends to “prevent violent insurrections by addressing this problem at its source,” that is, by removing all Republicans from office.
In the Trump trial, the former president’s lawyers objected to Wallace’s contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project. They did not object to all of her Democratic contributions, not even to the Warnock contribution, which she made knowing she would soon take the bench. But they moved for Wallace to recuse herself over the Turnout Project contribution because it concerned the specific subject of the trial, that is, whether Jan. 6 was an “insurrection.” The contribution suggested that Wallace, like Griswold, had already made up her mind.
How did Wallace respond? She responded like many a politician accused of wrongdoing: She said she could not remember making the Colorado Turnout Project contribution. “I have no specific memory of this contribution,” she said, making sure to include the lawyerly modifier “specific” in her defense. In fact, Wallace said, she didn’t even know what the Colorado Turnout Project was.
“I do not dispute that in October 2022, prior to taking the bench, I apparently made a $100 contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project,” Wallace said in the courtroom on Monday. “That being said, prior to yesterday, I was not cognizant of this organization or its mission. It has always been my practice, whether I was entirely successful or not, to make contributions to individuals, not [political action committees]. While I have no specific memory of this contribution, it was my practice and my intention to contribute to an individual candidate, and not a PAC.”
Wallace assured both sides that just because she contributed to an organization specifically founded to “prevent violent insurrections” like Jan. 6, that does not mean she has any opinion on whether Jan. 6 was in fact an “insurrection.” “I can assure all of the litigants that prior to the start of this litigation and to this day, I have formed no opinion whether the events of Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection, or whether Trump engaged in insurrection, or for that matter, any of the issues that need to be decided in this hearing,” Wallace said. “If I did, I would recuse myself.”
Since the judge pronounced herself opinion-free on the subject, she rejected the Trump motion to recuse herself. The trial began.
The episode provided yet another illustration of the reality underlying the legal pursuit of Trump. The former president says it’s all politically motivated, specifically that it is being driven by Democrats trying to make sure he does not win the White House again in 2024 or, in the Colorado case, that he cannot even appear on the ballot. And it is a fact that Democrats are driving the multifront legal assault on Trump. They are prosecuting him in New York. They are suing him in New York. They are prosecuting him in Georgia. Under the ultimate authority of President Joe Biden, they are prosecuting him in federal courts in Washington and Florida. They are filing suit to bar him from the ballot in many states, including Colorado. When Trump says this sprawling effort is being driven by his political adversaries, he’s right.
Perhaps some Democrats are uneasy with the optics, or maybe even the substance, of their party and its allies working so hard and on so many fronts to remove the leader of the opposition. But in Colorado, Wallace maintains that even if she could remember contributing to the Colorado Turnout Project, and she says she can’t, she has no opinions, absolutely no opinions, on the legal matter at hand and will therefore give Trump a fair hearing.
The 14th Amendment lawsuits aiming to remove Trump from the ballot are popping up all over the country. Here is a map of current suits in 26 states. Even though the cases are in the early stages, it’s a certainty that the issue will make it to the Supreme Court, just one more opposition-initiated legal proceeding that lies ahead for the former president.
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