CHICAGO (CN) — Attorneys for a group of Illinois voters who aim to boot former President Donald Trump off the state's 2024 ballot took their challenge to a Cook County judge on Friday.
The court battle comes after the Illinois Board of Elections voted unanimously to keep Trump on the ballot on Jan. 31 over objections from the voters. The group then filed an appeal on that decision, where they argued that Trump is ineligible to run for president based on language found in the 14th Amendment.
Voters in other states used similar reasoning and asserted that Trump’s involvement with the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021 disqualify him from the presidency because of the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment, which states that no U.S. official can hold a civil or military office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the country.
Attorneys for the Illinois voters used this logic when they argued before the Illinois Board of Elections in January and again in a Friday hearing. They maintained when they argued before Cook County Judge Tracie Porter on Friday that Trump is ineligible to run for president because he incited insurrection.
During Friday's proceedings, the attorneys played footage from the House Special Committee that investigated the breach on the Capitol, which depicted a speech Trump gave his supporters shortly before the riots where he told them “If you don’t fight like hell, you aren’t going to have a country anymore.”
Trump’s lawyers objected to this video and called it an inaccurate depiction of the events by a politically motivated committee.
The attorneys for the group of voters also argued that the election board improperly interpreted two sections of Illinois law when making their decisions.
While board members agreed that he engaged in insurrection, they said they did not have the constitutional jurisdiction to rule on that fact.
That decision was in line with the recommendation from Clark Erickson, a retired judge from Kankakee and the board's hearing officer. He said that while Trump’s engagement with the insurrection made him ineligible for the presidency, that should be adjudicated by the courts, not the state’s election board.
"Attempting to resolve a constitutional issue within the expedited schedule of an election board hearing is somewhat akin to scheduling a two-minute round between heavyweight boxers in a telephone booth," Erickson, a Republican, wrote in the election board's ruling.
Caryn Lederer, one of the voters’ attorneys, said Friday that election boards cannot bar an unqualified candidate from running for office, unless they can prove the candidate knowingly lied when they filled out the affidavit to run.
“This knowing lie standard has never been articulated or used by the Illinois electoral board,” Lederer said.
Trump’s attorneys, however, said in their response to the voters’ appeal that the claim should be thrown out because they couldn't prove the knowing lie standard with a preponderance of evidence.
“That was manifestly wrong,” Lederer said. She added that it’s an “unworkable standard” because it’s impossible for a notary to know a candidate’s true intentions when they’re filling out an affidavit for candidacy.
Lederer also said the board’s determination that it cannot engage in constitutional decisions is false, because the Board of Elections must act in accordance with the Illinois and U.S. constitutions.
Trump's attorneys agreed with Erickson that it was not up to the election board to determine the constitutionality of Trump’s candidacy but disagreed with his characterization of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riots.
Adam Merrill, one of the Trump campaign’s lawyers, said that Trump did not engage in insurrection — at least not in the way that the word is used in the constitution.
“This is not about whether Trump engaged in an insurrection,” Merrill said. “It’s about preventing a qualified candidate from appearing on the ballot.”
Nicholas Nelson, another attorney on the Trump campaign’s team, reiterated Merrill’s characterization of insurrection. He argued that the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment was not written to apply to former presidents.
Nelson said that the insurrection clause talks about officers of the United States, which expressly excludes the president.
He cited Article II, Section Four of the Constitution, which provides the impeachment requirements of the “President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States.”
Nelson argued that because the article separates the president and vice president from the other officers of the United States, the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause wouldn’t pertain to the president.
Trump’s lawyers also argued that it what happened on Jan. 6 wasn’t necessarily an insurrection, but more of an obstruction of justice.
Scott Gessler, another lawyer on the Trump campaign’s team, argued that insurrections have an end political goal or alternative in mind, which the Jan. 6 rioters did not.
"An insurrection has an element of a nullification of government authority across a wide swath of governmental avenues," he said.
Lederer said that attempting to stop the peaceful transfer of power in favor of a particular candidate constitutes as a political end goal.
Both Trump's and the voters’ lawyers told before Porter that it was imperative that the ballot issue is resolved expeditiously, as the March primary is just five weeks away.
Merrill added that the primary was coming up so soon that the Board of Elections wouldn’t even be able to reprint the ballots in time.
He maintained that this decision should ultimately be deferred to the U.S. Supreme Court, which took up the case on Feb. 8, and is expected to reach a decision as soon as Super Tuesday on Mar. 5.
Porter indicated that she plans to issue her ruling on the petitioners’ appeal by the next week.
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