An attorney for former President Donald Trump argued Thursday before the US Supreme Court that the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol was just a “riot” during a tense back-and-forth exchange with one of the high court’s liberal justices over what constitutes an “insurrection.”
“Why would this not be an insurrection?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked lawyer Jonathan Mitchell as the nine justices of the Supreme Court were hearing oral arguments in a landmark case over whether Trump — the GOP frontrunner — can remain on Colorado’s primary ballot ahead of the 2024 election.
Mitchell responded, “For an insurrection, there needs to be an organized concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence.”
Brown shot back, “And so, the point is that a chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?”
Mitchell went on to say, “We didn’t concede that it’s an effort to overthrow the government either,” and chalked up the deadly events of January 6 to a “shameful” “riot.”
“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 did not qualify as an insurrection as that term is used in Section 3” of the 14th Amendment, Mitchell said.
Brown’s question to Mitchell came nearly an hour after open arguments in the case began.
Earlier, the liberal justice noted that the Colorado Supreme Court — which ruled that Trump incited protesters before the January 6 attack and therefore violated the 14th Amendment — qualified the events of that day as an “insurrection” as defined by Section 3.
“I read your opening brief to accept that those events counted as an insurrection, but then your reply seemed to suggest that they were not, so what is your position to that,” Brown asked Mitchell.
Mitchell explained, “We never accepted or conceded in our opening brief that this was an insurrection. What we said in our opening brief was President Trump did not engage in any act that can plausibly be characterized as an insurrection.”
Trump is fighting back against the Colorado top court’s ruling that deemed him disqualified from running for president and holding office over his actions on January 6 and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Most legal experts on constitutional law say the US Supreme Court is likely to side with Trump.