Alina Habba, attorney and legal spokesperson for former President Donald Trump, revealed in a Wednesday Fox News interview that President Trump does have concerns over the ballot disqualification challenge landing in the Supreme Court and how the justices will rule.
She responded to comments made by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on CNN, where she predicted President Trump would be concerned that the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court would rule against him in an effort to not seem biased.
“That’s a concern he’s voiced to me, he’s voiced to everybody publicly, not privately,” she said.
She added that President Trump’s concern about the conservative justices ruling against him was “valid.”
“Republicans are conservative, they get nervous, they unfortunately sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even though the laws are on our side, they may appear to be swayed much like the Democratic side would do,” she said. “They’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call.”
“I just encourage them to look at the law and the Constitution. It’s very clean cut,” she said. “There’s no politics that should be involved in this.”
She said that, based on the law, “it should be a simple decision.”
Ms. Habba also criticized the “radical left” that believes “the highest court in this country would be as radical and ridiculous as some of the Soros-backed AGs and DAs I’ve seen in court against Donald Trump.”
“I’m looking forward to what their decision is. They are going to have to make tough decisions, obviously,” she said. “To me, the law is very clear. There is due process, there’s rights to trial, there’s rights to be heard.”
On Dec. 19, the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified President Trump from the state primary ballot, setting up the Supreme Court to weigh in on the 14th Amendment ballot challenges of which there have been more than 60 in recent months.
When the Colorado GOP appealed the decision on Dec. 27, it halted the chance that President Trump could be taken off the ballot. On Jan. 3, President Trump filed his own petition for immediate review with the high court.
While the Colorado Supreme Court ruling was framed to have little chance to actually go into effect and remove President Trump from the ballot, it affirmed a district court ruling that found the events of Jan. 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection” and President Trump had engaged in it.
“You can’t call someone an insurrectionist that never did an insurrection, that’s never been guilty of an insurrection,” Ms. Habba added. “It’s un-American, it’s frankly election interference at its finest. They’re just desperate.”
After the Colorado rulings, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows issued her own decision to remove President Trump from the ballot finding he had engaged in and incited an “insurrection” on Jan. 6.
The Maine decision did not go into effect either, as a condition for removal was if President Trump did not appeal the decision in court, and he did so this week.
But now three jurisdictions have ruled President Trump an insurrectionist without any such charges having been brought. It’s notable that well over a thousand citizens have been charged in Jan. 6 related cases, but not for insurrection.
The insurrection arguments in these three venues had been based wholesale on material and testimony from the controversial Jan. 6 Select Committee report.
Attorneys arguing for President Trump had tried unsuccessfully to have the reports omitted from evidence, arguing that it was a partisan document. Judges and officials had faulted the Trump team for making blanket arguments about the report without trying to refute specific points and arguments made based on the report by the plaintiffs.
After attorneys for President Trump filed an appeal at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, a spokesperson from the campaign blasted the Colorado ruling as a partisan effort to “disenfranchise all American voters.”
“This is an unAmerican, unconstitutional act of election interference which cannot stand. We urge a clear, summary rejection of the Colorado Supreme Court’s wrongful ruling and the execution of a free and fair election this November,” stated Steven Cheung, campaign spokesperson.
