the supreme court on colorado supreme court s decision to remove trump from the ballot. notably, there is actually already an appeal in colorado. technically, trump wouldn t have to appeal. he could let that case go before the supreme court and it would answer the same questions, but in speaking with the team last night he does want to file his own,a own appeal and it s been two weeks and timing is of the essence here because we re trying to get some clarity, right? for the 50 states and of course, the candidates as well on this question of whether he is eligible under section 3 of the 14th amendment of the constitution. there seems to be broad consensus that the supreme court really needs to weigh in here. the republicans in colorado have asked for clarity before super tuesday. so the fact that they ve taken over two weeks before filing this appeal is notable, but as you laid out at the beginning of the segment there are a lot of
hopes nobody washes it off. none of these arguments really carry any weight. the 14th amendment is really straightforward. it says that if you have previously taken an oath of office to defend the constitution and engage in an insurrection thereafter, you are no longer qualified to be president. is that going to be the issue if the supreme court takes it up? are they going to weigh into that? because that seems to be the issue that legal observers say they re not going to want to get into the politics of this and they ll perhaps choose a more procedural route. there s no procedural route here. you have to be 35 years old to be president. you have to live in the united states 14 years. you have to be a natural-born citizen. if you re a president and won twice election for presidency, you can t run a third time. these are self-executing requirements that the constitution sets out and that
the past. absolutely. it will have to be one ruling. the problem is you don t want a patchwork of different state rulings. you need to have one ruling on it. this has never happened before. no one has ever contested any of these prerequisites to be president. there s never been an issue as to someone was foreign born or whether they were actually 35 years old and this was the first time that we ve ever had a president that was involved in an insurrection and this has never come up before. the supreme court has got his hands full and there s no question about it, and i think that the way to do this as i said before that the chief justice can get involved with looking at the actual underlying evidence particularly what donald trump s vice president had to say to the grand jury, to me, that would be critical. nick akerman and the stakes could not be higher. good to have you.
people have to be pre-qualified before they can run for president. the issue before the supreme court, the only real issue is was there an insurrection that he engaged in and that s what they have to look at and they re in a very unique position to look at evidence that neither the colorado supreme court looked at or the secretary of state of maine. as essentially the body that oversees the federal grand jury system, they have the right to reach into the washington, d.c., grand jury that brought that election interference criminal case and look at the testimony that s there in camera to be able to review it. look at what mike pence had to say about what happened on january 6th and look at what his lawyer his to say on those particular issues. trump s lawyers would say and have said what about our due process? it s not up to the states. it is up to congress to determine how the 14th amendment will be applieded and to that y
potentially push this entire trial which was scheduled for march back beyond the election or if it s decided pretty quickly by the court of appeals and the supreme court does whatever it will or will not do here, they still might be able to squeeze in this case. they put it at 50/50 whether this case will go and whether or not we re looking for answers from the court of appeals whether trump has immunity and we saw him doubling down last night in his filing. the bigger question is how long does it take to wrap up this issue so this trial may go forward? paula reid, i always get so excited when you say you re exactly right. thank you very much for being with us, as always. let s continue the conversation with us now is former assistant prosecutor and former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york nick akerman. good morning. what do you make of trump s main filing? his main filing, he s trying to throw as much ketchup on the wall as he possibly can and