Former President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared confident that the Supreme Court would allow him to remain on 2024 election ballots in Colorado, predicting that the three justices he appointed to the high court and others would rule in his favor.
“We put on three great justices, and you have some other great justices up there, and they’re not going to take the vote away from the people,” the 77-year-old Republican presidential primary front-runner told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“I’m sure the Supreme Court is going to say, ‘We’re not going to take the vote away from the people,’” Trump added, charging that President Biden is the real “threat to democracy.”
In a 4-3 decision last month, the liberal-majority Colorado Supreme Court deemed Trump ineligible to appear on 2024 ballots in the Centennial State under the Constitution’s so-called insurrection clause.
The justices in the majority determined that Trump “engaged in an insurrection” with his actions in the lead up to and during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case seeking to overturn the Colorado court’s ruling next month.
The former president went on to argue that his strong performance in numerous state and national polls should be factored in by the justices on the high court.
“But I don’t think the Supreme Court would do it because you can’t take the vote. You know, I’m leading in every poll. I’m leading Biden, but I’m leading the remaining Republicans … they’re barely hanging on. How can you possibly take the vote away?” he said.
Trump appeared to be still focused on his pending court cases when Hannity asked the former president to give a “closing message to the people of New Hampshire” ahead of the state’s Jan. 23 GOP primary.
“It’s very simple: It’s Make America great again,” Trump said, before changing the subject to the pending verdict in his presidential immunity case that was argued before a three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week.
The former president suggested that his immunity case would eventually wind up in the Supreme Court as well.
“They have another important [case] and that’s immunity for the president, the president of the United States. And I’m not talking about myself,” Trump said.
“I’m talking about any president has to have immunity, because if you take immunity away from the president, so important, you will have – you have a president that’s not going to be able to do anything, because when he leaves office, the opposing party president, if it’s the opposing party, will indict the president for doing something that should have been good.”
Trump argued that if the courts rule against him on his presidential immunity claim, Biden, 81, will face indictments when he leaves office over his handling of the border crisis and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan even though, as Trump put it, “he probably meant well.”
“I think it’s horrible what he did, but he probably, I don’t know, it’s hard to believe, but he probably meant well,” Trump said of Biden’s policies. “It’s hard to believe that he meant well but the man is incompetent. But you have to leave immunity with the president.”
If the DC circuit court or Supreme Court were to side with Trump on his immunity claim, it would likely stymie efforts by special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute him for his actions during the Capitol riot.
Unlike the Colorado ballot case, the former president didn’t predict what the outcome of his immunity claim would be during his Fox News appearance.
In a Truth Social post earlier in the day Trump said he hoped that it would be “an easy decision” for the courts.
“God bless the Supreme Court,” he added.
