Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson grilled Trump lawyer Jonathan Mitchell over his claim that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was not an insurrection.
The court on Thursday heard arguments in the former president’s appeal of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring him from the state’s primary ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrection” clause. Jackson noted that the Colorado court concluded that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to halt the count of electoral votes “qualified as an insurrection” under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“What is your argument that it’s not?” Jackson asked Mitchell. “Your reply brief says that it wasn’t, because I think you say, it did not involve an organized attempt to overthrow the government.”
“That’s one of many reasons,” Mitchell replied. “But for an insurrection, there needs to be an organized, concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence.”
Jackson questioned if a “chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?”
“No, we didn’t concede that it’s an effort to overthrow the government either,” Mitchell said. “None of these criteria were met. This was a riot. It was not an insurrection. The events were shameful, criminal, violent, all of those things. But it did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in Section 3.”
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