Major ruling looms after closing arguments in Trump 14th Amendment trial in

CNN
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Closing arguments wrapped up Wednesday in Donald Trump’s disqualification trial in Colorado, paving the way for a state judge to decide by the end of this week whether the former president is barred from office under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace is expected to issue a ruling on Thursday or Friday. She presided over a weeklong bench trial, where lawyers representing a group of Colorado voters argued that Trump – the current front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination – is ineligible for office and should be removed from the state’s 2024 ballot because he “engaged” in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Trump already beat back similar cases in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Michigan, where a judge decided Tuesday to keep Trump on the Republican primary ballot. Legal experts have viewed these cases as a long shot to actually stop Trump’s campaign.

But the landscape might be different in Colorado. Those other cases were dismissed before reaching a trial. Wallace repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s attempts to throw out the Colorado case, and allowed the challengers to introduce a wide array of evidence against him, including some of the most damning findings from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack.

The 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War, says American officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the arcane provision doesn’t define “insurrection” and doesn’t spell out how to enforce the ban. It has only been applied twice since 1919.

“I wish we didn’t have to be here,” Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the challengers, said during closing arguments. “We’re here because, for the first time in our nation’s history, the President of the United States has engaged in insurrection against the Constitution. … And now he wants to be president again. The Constitution does not allow that.”

Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has decried these 14th Amendment lawsuits as an abuse of the legal process. He is under federal and state indictment in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and has pleaded not guilty.

His attorney Scott Gessler told Wallace to ignore the findings from the “overwhelmingly biased” January 6 House…