• Trial to boot Trump from the presidential ballot in Colorado kicked off Monday
  • Case is first 14th Amendment argument to go to trial with critics in other states looking to follow suit – including Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota
  • Lawyer for Trump said plaintiffs are using shoddy definition of insurrection 

The trial to boot Donald Trump off the ballot in Colorado kicked-off Monday with a lawyer for the former president claiming his critics are using a tawdry definition of insurrection as an excuse to stop him from running for president in the state.

Anti-Trump advocacy groups in other states, like Michigan and Minnesota, are also pursuing the 14th Amendment path to prevent Trump from running in 2024.

The trial this week could set a precedent for whether the argument has any viability.

Groups that don’t want another Trump presidency are bringing the case over his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

The 14th Amendment says anyone who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then ‘engaging in insurrection or rebellion’ is disqualified from holding higher office.

But a lawyer for Trump said on Monday that it is still not proven the ex-president engaged in the insurrection – and went further to claim the definition of ‘insurrection’ has been bastardized since the attack on the Capitol.

The one-week trial before a Denver judge could be a test of whether Trump’s opponents elsewhere have a viable path to keep him off the ballot under the rarely-used, Civil War-era provision.

Colorado Republican congresswoman and staunch Trump ally Rep. Lauren Boebert denounced the case on Monday.

‘Any effort to keep President Trump off the ballot in Colorado or any other state are pathetic attempts at overturning the will of the American people,’ she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

‘It has become clear that lawfare will be the Left’s preferred method of battle in 2024 and our job is to fight back against it at every turn. With the federal government so weaponized against our side, the need to take back the White House has never been so critical.’

Trump has denied wrongdoing after a mob of his supporters descended on the Capitol in attempts to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s November 2020 presidential election win.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Eric Olson, said in his opening statement in court that Trump urged his supporters to violence in a speech before the riot and continued to encourage them on social media.

‘He used ‘fight’ 20 times in that speech, ‘peacefully’ only once,’ Olson said.

A lawyer for Trump, Scott Gesler, denied that Trump incited supporters to violence and said it would set a dangerous precedent to disqualify him based on ‘legal theories that have never been embraced by a state or federal court.’

‘People should be able to run for office and shouldn’t be punished for their speech,’ Gesler told the court.

‘The claim that there was an insurrection – what constitutes an insurrection really needs to be grounded in historical usage,’ Gesler said before the court on Monday.

‘Because if you don’t ground it in historical usage, you’re just making it up,’ he said, accusing the plaintiffs of creating their own definition to match their prerogative to het Trump kicked off the ballot.