- Supreme Court judges ruled 9-0 that the former president should remain at the polls
- Trump said it was a “well-crafted” decision that would unify the country
- “You can’t take someone out of a career,” he said Monday at Mar-a-Lago.
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Former President Donald Trump on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate him on the presidential ballot as “well-crafted,” saying it would unify the country.
He thanked the judges for working quickly to issue a ruling that he said would be remembered for 200 years.
And he urged the court to grant him immunity in the next election case it will consider, arguing that any other decision would leave him open to prosecution for US military actions that killed senior terrorist leaders in the Middle East.
“You can’t take someone out of a career,” he said Monday afternoon at his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida.
‘Voters can remove a person from the race very quickly. But a court should not do that. The Supreme Court saw it.
“And I really think that will be a unifying factor.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Donald Trump can remain on the ballot, in a fatal blow to states trying to oust him and just 24 hours before 15 states vote on Super Tuesday.
Two and a half hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously restored the former president to the primary ballot, rejecting state attempts to hold the former Republican president responsible for the Capitol riot.
Last week, the justices said they would also take up a case that would see whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
On Monday, Trump said that removing his immunity would leave him open to prosecution for other things, such as his attacks on the terrorist group ISIS.
‘I took out ISIS and I took out some very important people from the point of view of a different part of the world… two of the top terrorists… probably the two top terrorists we’ve ever seen in this world,’ he said.
And those are important decisions. I don’t want to be prosecuted for it.
In 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, founder and leader of ISIS, was killed in a raid by US forces. A year later, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq.
(Osama bin Laden, who ordered the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in history, was killed during Barack Obama’s presidency in 2011.)
Trump said no president would be able to act with a “free and clear mind” if the threat of prosecution hangs over him.
The judges handed down their ruling a day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will make their decision.
Trump addressed cameras at Mar-a-Lago on Monday hours after the ruling.
Donald Trump supporters confront police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021
Anti-Trump protesters protest outside the US Supreme Court before the court decides whether former US President Donald Trump is eligible to run for president in the 2024 election in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2024.
The court ruled that states cannot use a post-Civil War constitutional provision to prevent candidates from appearing on ballots. He said the power lies solely with Congress.
“Great victory for America,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
The ruling ends efforts in Colorado, Maine and Illinois to exclude the former president from the polls using a mechanism that disqualifies “candidates involved in the insurrection” from taking office again.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said: ‘I am disappointed by the United States Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment on federal candidates.
“Colorado should be able to exclude oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot.”
Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Section 3 did apply to Trump, the first time a court applied the mechanism to a presidential candidate.
But in their 20-page ruling, the justices said only Congress could determine who was allowed to run.
“States cannot unilaterally disqualify Donald Trump from the election,” they said in an unsigned opinion. ‘The ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court is reversed.’
The case is the court’s most direct intervention in a presidential election since Bush v Gore, when it effectively handed the deadlocked 2000 result to Republican candidate George W. Bush.