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Left: Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Mendon, Ill., Saturday, June 25, 2022 (Mike Sorensen/Quincy Herald-Whig via AP). Right: Information papers are seen on a table during the Illinois State Board of Elections meeting in Chicago, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. Illinois (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh).
With a small window of time left open for him to appeal the decision, Donald Trump has been removed from the presidential primary ballot in Illinois after a state judge found the former president engaged in insurrection and is therefore disqualified.
“Given the conclusion by this court that Section III disqualifies Respondent-Candidate, which are supported by factual findings in the Electoral Board’s Record, this Court concludes that Respondent-Candidate falsely swore in his statement of Candidacy filed on Jan. 4, 2024, that he was ‘legally qualified’ for the office he sought,” wrote Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter.
The decision comes at a time when the state itself is poised to open its polls in a matter of days and early voters have already begun submitting their ballots.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is actively weighing oral arguments it heard three weeks ago when attorneys for Trump and those representing voters in Colorado went head-to-head over Section III of the Fourteenth Amendment and whether Trump could constitutionally appear on the ballot there after Colorado Judge Sarah B. Wallace found he engaged in insurrection but nonetheless left him on the primary ballot.
It triggered a tidal wave now cresting at the nation’s high court.
But back in Illinois, Porter found that the recent decision by the Illinois State Board of Elections to keep Trump on the ballot was improper. She acknowledged that her decision “could not be the ultimate outcome.”
Now, her order to remove him will be stayed, or left on hold, until Friday, while she expects an appeal to be made.
That is expected imminently — Trump’s spokesperson told NBC News the ruling was “unconstitutional.”
A “preponderance of evidence” demonstrated by the petitioners in Illinois had convinced Porter that Trump was ineligible under the Civil War era statute.
The “plain language and plain meanings of Section III, applies to the former president now seeking to hold office again as the President of the United States,” the judge wrote.
For instance, where Trump’s lawyers had claimed that “violence by him was needed to ‘engage’ in insurrection,”” Porter wrote that the circuit court rejected that outright.
“President Jefferson Davis did not actually fight in the Civil War because he was responsible for the political and administrative management of the war efforts and he was still disqualified under Section III of the Fourteenth Amendment for engaging in insurrection,” the judge noted in a citation of her ruling.
A five-day hearing on the evidence was had in her court, she wrote. From that analysis, in addition to the “exhaustive analysis” already done in Colorado that she relied upon, Trump’s “engaging” in insurrection was clear.
“There are just under 7,000 pages of written materials, of which some have been admitted into evidence, and at least 100 separate videos and images dating prior to and on Jan. 6, 2021, including Twitter posts … [d]espite this historical and mammoth size of the information, including a surge of pleadings, findings of facts, and recommendations, both from the Hearing Officer Judge Erickson and the Electoral Board’s own General Counsel, this Court cannot lose sight of the forest for the trees,” Porter wrote.
She also called the Electoral Board’s decision to deny voters this outcome “clearly erroneous” while acknowledging the “magnitude of this decision and its impact on the upcoming primary Illinois elections.”
The primary in Illinois is March 19; in Colorado, the polls open on March 5.
Illinois is now the third state to remove Trump from its ballot under Section III of the Fourteenth Amendment which bars insurrectionists from holding office. In addition to Colorado, Maine also removed him. Both of those rulings remain on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court decides the Colorado question.
“Every court or official that has addressed the merits of Trump’s constitutional eligibility has found that he engaged in insurrection after taking the oath of office and is therefore disqualified from the presidency,” Ron Fein said Wednesday. Fein is a legal director at Free Speech For People, the group representing voters along with Illinois co-counsel Ed Mullen.
