The last time Republican members of Congress urged Supreme Court justices to help Donald Trump in an elections case, it was December 2020. American voters had just handed the incumbent president a stinging defeat, and his allies hoped to convince justices to help overturn the results.
Roughly two-thirds of the House GOP conference signed onto a brief endorsing a radical anti-election case. The Atlantic‘s David Graham wrote at the time, “This embrace of the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election is both shocking and horrifying. … Republican officials have gone from coddling a sore loser to effectively abandoning democracy.”
We now know, of course, that the effort failed; the justices rejected the case; and Trump left the White House. Three years later, however, congressional Republicans are again asking the high court to help the defeated president, though under very different legal circumstances. Politico reported:
Nearly 200 congressional Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have joined a Supreme Court brief urging the court to side with former President Donald Trump on the question of if he is eligible to be on Colorado’s ballot in the 2024 election. The Supreme Court agreed to review a December ruling by a Colorado court that barred former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars any public official who swore an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Because of Trump’s post-defeat efforts, and his role in attacking his own country’s democracy, the Colorado Supreme Court found him ineligible.
After the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case, two prominent GOP lawmakers — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — took the lead in organizing the legal brief, urging the justices to overturn the Colorado ruling.
As of this morning, 46 GOP senators had signed their names to the endeavor, which raised an obvious question: Which three Senate Republicans didn’t sign on to the brief? Barring a change of heart — which remains a distinct possibility — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah were the only GOP senators who refrained from endorsing the Supreme Court filing. As for McConnell, the Senate minority leader, more than once, publicly blamed Trump for lying to his followers about the 2020 election and causing insurrectionist violence. The Kentucky Republican signed onto Cruz’s brief anyway. It’s not yet clear whether congressional Democrats will bother with a competing legal brief making the opposite argument to the justices.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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