Two things were obvious this morning in the Supreme Court, where the justices pondered whether former President Donald Trump is disqualified from seeking the presidency because of his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
One is that Jonathan Mitchell, the lawyer representing Trump, was in way over his head. During Mitchell’s time at the podium, the justices took turns ripping apart his arguments — or even criticizing him for abandoning stronger legal arguments in favor of weaker ones. Mitchell also made embarrassing concessions, admitting that he had no historical evidence to support some of his key claims.
The other obvious thing is that it didn’t matter: Trump is going to win. After Mitchell stepped down from the podium, after emphasizing two arguments that nearly all the justices appeared to view as weak, most of the Court spent the rest of the argument trying to come up with a better reason to rule in favor of Trump.
In this case, Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that Trump must be removed from its presidential ballot under a provision of the 14th Amendment that prohibits former high-ranking officials who engage in an “insurrection” from serving in office again.
The Court appears likely to rule that this decision was wrong because state courts, as opposed to federal courts or Congress, may not determine that a presidential candidate is ineligible. As Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, said at one point, the question of who can seek the highest federal office “sounds awfully national to me,” and thus should be resolved in a federal forum.
Most of the justices piled on with similar arguments. One leading concern, raised by several justices, is that there could be competing decisions reaching competing conclusions if each state is allowed to determine whether a candidate is ineligible for the presidency.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, worried that each state’s courts will have…
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