Maine disqualifies Trump as Supreme Court considers 2024 ballot challenge: Live

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked Wednesday by a New Hampshire voter about the reason for the Civil War, and she didn’t mention slavery in her response — leading the voter to say he was “astonished” by her omission.

Asked during a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire, what she believed had caused the war — the first shots of which were fired in her home state of South Carolina — Haley talked about the role of government, replying that it involved “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do.”

She then turned the question back to the man who had asked it, who replied that he was not the one running for president and wished instead to know her answer.

After Haley went into a lengthier explanation about the role of government, individual freedom and capitalism, the questioner seemed to admonish Haley, saying, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.”

“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley asked, before abruptly moving on to the next question.

Ms Dingell criticized the former president on CNN on Tuesday over Christmas Day messages he made on the Truth Social platform. Mr Trump had claimed that his political opponents “are looking to destroy our once great USA”, adding “may they rot in hell”.

Ms Dingell called Mr Trump’s message “one of the most pathetic Christmas greetings I’ve heard – when a former President of the United States who wants to return tells people on Christmas Day that they can ‘rot in hell’”.

She added that Mr Trump was adding to the “divisiveness” and “division” across the United States.

The former president then began his response by calling her a “LOSER” on Truth Social.

Maine’s GOP has pledged to challenge a decision that finds Donald Trump constutionally ineligible for the presidency.

“We will be taking this to court and will fight to the Supreme Court if necessary,” the group said in a statement.

“And we reserve our right as a private organization to use another system – if that’s what it takes to keep a Democrat Hack Secretary of State from infringing on the Rights of Maine voters.”

On Wednesday, Colorado Republicans appealed that state’s supreme court ruling on Trump’s eligibility to the US Supreme Court.

Plaintiffs in that case have asked the nation’s highest court to expedite a review of the case, which they argued “involves issues of exceptional national importance” and should be quickly resolved ahead of a crucial deadline for ballot preparation ahead of the 5 March primary election.

Prosecutors with the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith have asked the judge overseeing the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump to prohibit the ex-president from raising “politicised claims” and “irrelevant issues” when the case goes to trial before a Washington, DC jury next year.

In the 20-page filing submitted before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday, Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom say that Mr Trump “has made clear his intent to introduce evidence and make arguments that are improper—whether because they have no bearing on his guilt or innocence, are otherwise irrelevant, or are substantially more prejudicial than probative” and ask that such evidence or arguments be excluded from presentation to a jury.

Although the 5 March 2024 start date for Mr Trump’s trial has been stayed while the DC Circuit Court of Appeals considers the ex-president’s appeal of Judge Chutkan’s rejection of his claims of presidential immunity, the prosecutors under Mr Smith have continued filing documents with the court to enable a speedy trial should the stay be lifted.

Maine’s top elections official has disqualified Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 ballots.

It’s the second state to do so, and his campaign is teeing up an appeal.

Trump also is expected to appeal to the US Supreme Court, after a filing from Colorado’s GOP asked the justices to review the case and reverse a Colorado decision barring Trump from next year’s ballot.

The nation’s highest court could soon consider whether the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president is ineligible for the presidency for launching an insurrection, an unprecedented question at the heart of more than a dozen lawsuits across the US

Trump’s campaign and allies in Congress and in media are furious with a decision from Maine’s top elections official to disqualify him from 2024 ballots, a decision based on challenges to his eligibility under Section 3 of the 14th Amendemnt, which bars candidates who engaged in insurrection from running for office.

Third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik called the decision “illegal” and “corrupt”. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel called it “election interference”. Donald Trump Jr broadly swiped at “radical leftist/marxists in charge” who “don’t care about rules, decency, decorum, or anything other than power.”

The decision was also opposed by Republican Senator Susan Collins – who was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection during his second impeachment trial.

“Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature,” she said. “The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned.”

In an interview with CNN after disqualifying Trump from appearing on 2024 ballots, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows explained why she came to the decision that not only did Trump engage with the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, he is ineligible for public office under the 14th Amendment because of it.

“The weight of the evidence brought forward under Maine law … made it clear that Mr Trump was aware of the tinder he laid in a multi-month effort to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election,” she said.

“And then, in an unprecedented and tragic series of events, chose to light a match.”

The former president hasn’t been charged with or convicted of insurrection, but “the applicablity of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not turn on whether or not [he] has been found guilty of a crime,” she said.

Donald Trump’s campaign reportedly physically flew “fake elector” ballots across the country to Washington DC in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election.

According to CNN, leaked witness testimony from a Michigan state investigation shows how Trump’s aides scrambled to deliver the allegedly fraudulent paperwork to vice president Mike Pence before he could certify the election results.

Following a December hearing on three challenges to Trump’s eligibility in the state, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows concluded that his primary election petition is invalid and that he is not qualified to hold the office of president under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” she wrote in her decision on Thursday.

“Democracy is sacred … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” she added.

“The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic,” she wrote. “They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The US Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and [state statute] requires me to act in response.”

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung predictably blasted a decision from Maine’s secretary of state that tentatively removes the former president from 2024 ballots.

He called her a “virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.”

Trump and his allies have repeatedly amplified a conspiracy theory that the multiple lawsuits and criminal indictments against him are part of a wider effort directed by the president to keep Mr Trump out of office.

“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” he said. “Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot.”

Trump, of course, is accused of violating Americans’ civil liberties with his own election interference to overturn the results of millions of Americans’ votes and allow a mob of his supporters to do so by force

Cheung calls the consequences of such actions “a hostile assault on American democracy.”

“Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power,” he said.