2023

Michigan’s Supreme Court is keeping former President Donald Trump on the state’s primary election ballot.

The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot.

It said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied “because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.”

The ruling contrasts with Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump’s name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. Until the Colorado ruling, all had failed.

The Colorado ruling is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the rarely used Civil War-era provision.

The plaintiffs in Michigan can technically try again to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the general election, though it’s likely there will be a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue by then. The state’s high court on Wednesday upheld an appeals court ruling that the Republican Party could place anyone it wants on the primary ballot. But the court was silent on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would disqualify Trump in November if he becomes the GOP nominee.

“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, the liberal group that filed the suit to disqualify Trump in the state. “The ruling conflicts with longstanding US Supreme Court precedent that makes clear that when political parties use the election machinery of the state to select, via the primary process, their candidates for the general election, they must comply with all constitutional requirements in that process.”

Trump hailed the order, calling the effort to keep him off the ballot in multiple states a “pathetic gambit.”

Only one of the court’s seven justices dissented. Justice Elizabeth M. Welch, a Democrat, wrote that she would have kept Trump on the primary ballot but the court should rule on the merits of the Section 3 challenge. The court has a 4-3 Democratic majority.

Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan’s Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president ’s 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording’s legitimacy.

Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Minnesota and Oregon, had asked Michigan’s Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day.

The group argued that time was “of the essence” due to “the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election.”

Earlier this month, Michigan’s high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court.

Free Speech for People had sued to force Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to bar Trump from Michigan’s ballot. But a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected that group’s arguments, saying in November that it was the proper role of Congress to decide the question.

Looking ahead to the next 14th Amendment decision, Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday asked Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State to disqualify herself from deciding whether the former president can be on that state’s primary ballot. Shenna Bellows held a public hearing earlier this month on requests to bar Trump from the Maine ballot, and her ruling is expected this week.

Trump’s attorneys asked Bellows to step aside, pointing to tweets that she posted after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol calling it an “insurrection” and bemoaning that Trump wasn’t convicted by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House of Representatives.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith asked a judge on Wednesday to bar Donald Trump’s lawyers from injecting politics into the former president’s trial on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Smith’s office told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in a 20-page filing that Trump’s lawyers should be prevented from “raising irrelevant political issues or arguments in front of the jury,” including that the prosecution against him is vindictive and selective or was coordinated by President Joe Biden.

“In addition to being wrong, these allegations are irrelevant to the jury’s determination of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, would be prejudicial if presented to the jury, and must be excluded,” prosecutors wrote.

The motion to preclude Trump from introducing broad categories of arguments is a way for prosecutors to try to set parameters on what information they believe the jury should, or should not, hear when the case reaches trial. It was filed as the case is effectively on hold during an appeal of the former president’s claims that he is immune from prosecution for acts taken while in the White House.

The Supreme Court declined last week to get involved in the dispute for now, but a federal appeals panel is set to hear arguments on the matter on Jan. 9. The trial is scheduled for March 4 in federal court in Washington, but it could be postponed by appeals of the immunity issue.

Trump responded later Wednesday by accusing Smith’s team of “ignoring the law and clear instructions” from the judge by filing at a motion at a time when the case was on pause. He called the motion “pathetic” and an “illegal” effort to deprive him of his free speech rights at trial by taking away his right to argue that the case is a “political persecution.”

Trump’s lawyers had earlier asked Chutkan to dismiss the case on the grounds that the indictment was vindictive and selective. In their motion Wednesday, prosecutors said that request should not only be denied but Trump’s lawyers should be prohibited from making that argument to a jury during the trial.

“Although the defendant is entitled to cross-examine the Government’s law enforcement witnesses about matters fairly within the scope of their direct testimony, he cannot raise wholly irrelevant topics in an effort to confuse and distract the jury,” prosecutors said. “Much as the defendant would like it otherwise, this trial should be about the facts and the law, not politics.”

The motion also seeks to prevent Trump from telling jurors about the potential punishment he could face if convicted, as well as blaming law enforcement agencies for a lack of preparation in advance of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when Trump loyalists motivated by the then-president’s false claims of voter fraud stormed the building in an effort to disrupt the certification of electoral votes.

“A bank robber cannot defend himself by blaming the bank’s security guard for failing to stop him,” prosecutors wrote. “A fraud defendant cannot claim to the jury that his victims should have known better than to fall for his scheme. And the defendant cannot argue that law enforcement should have prevented the violence he caused and obstruction he intended.”

Though Trump’s state of mind as he sought to overturn the results of the election he lost to Biden will be a pivotal question for jurors, prosecutors said defense lawyers should not be permitted to elicit speculative testimony from witnesses about his thoughts or beliefs.

And they also said he should not be permitted to introduce any evidence about alleged foreign influence in the 2020 race, saying it would be an “irrelevant and confusing sideshow.”

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