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Former US President Donald Trump wants to submit the legal dispute over his participation in the upcoming primaries to the Supreme Court of the United States. He turned to the Supreme Court in Washington on Wednesday (local time) to force his participation in the presidential primaries in the state of Colorado, as his campaign team announced. The move aims to overturn a decision by Colorado’s highest court that he was disqualified from the state’s primaries for his role in the 2021 storming of the Capitol.

The top elections supervisor in the state of Maine also made a similar decision. Trump has already appealed against this, but initially in a lower court. The sensitive political issue was expected to eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court could theoretically reject the question. However, legal experts expect the court to take up the case to avoid legal chaos in an election year.

The background to the dispute is the unprecedented attack on the US House of Representatives, almost exactly three years ago: Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Congress met there to formally confirm Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Trump had earlier incited his supporters during a speech with baseless claims that the election victory had been stolen from him through massive fraud. Five people were killed as a result of the riots. Trump is accused of attempted election fraud for his actions surrounding the elections.

Based on these events, several plaintiffs in various US states have been trying for some time to have Trump’s name removed from the ballots for the presidential primaries. In concrete terms, this concerns the so-called prohibition of insurrection in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. It states that no one may hold a higher office in the state who has previously participated as a civil servant in an uprising against the state. Although the passage gives some examples of such higher offices, it does not explicitly mention the office of president.

Anyone who wants to run for office as a Republican or Democratic candidate in the US must first win in the party’s internal primaries. In states like Michigan and Minnesota, prosecutors failed in their efforts to remove Trump from the primary race. Decisions are still pending in other states. However, decisions were made against Trump in Maine and Colorado.

In Colorado, the Supreme Court ruled in December that the Republican was unfit to serve as president due to his role in the storming of the Capitol and therefore could not participate in the primaries.

According to US media, Trump’s lawyers’ request to the Supreme Court now argues that the Colorado Supreme Court has overstepped its authority – the question of presidential fitness is a matter for the US Congress and not state courts. The constitutional amendment, according to which people who have incited an ‘insurrection’ against the constitution are excluded from elections, also does not apply in Trump’s case.

Trump’s lawyers had already filed a formal objection to the decision in Maine on Tuesday, but initially in a court in the state.

The two decisions in Colorado and Maine were on hold pending Trump’s appeal. The decisions initially have no consequences as long as the appeal procedure is ongoing and there is no definitive clarification.

Time is running out. The Republican primaries begin on January 15 with the first voting in the state of Iowa. The Republican primaries in Colorado and Maine are scheduled for March 5, the so-called Super Tuesday, when voting will take place in a number of US states. However, the ballots are printed some time in advance.

Trump wants to run for the Republicans again in the presidential elections in November, and in the polls he is so far ahead of the field of Republican candidates. For the Democrats, Biden wants to run for a second term. He has no serious internal competition.

In addition to the legal dispute over his participation in the primaries, Trump also faces several major legal proceedings in the coming months on various criminal charges — including the storming of the Capitol and his efforts to retroactively overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to make. (sda/dpa)