CNN’s Jeffery Toobin predicted Friday that former President Donald Trump will have a “slam dunk” victory in the Supreme Court case regarding the 14th Amendment after the oral arguments Thursday.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in December that Trump is ineligible to be on the state’s primary ballot under Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. Trump appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday regarding the case.
Toobin said the Colorado lawyers did a poor job defending their position.
“I have rarely seen a contested case where the political breakdown did not – was not reflected in the oral argument. This was close to unanimous. Justice Sotomayor, a little harder to read, but the other eight, every argument that was put out in favor of the disqualifying the Trump candidacy, you know, went nowhere,” Toobin said. “You know, was he covered by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment? Did Colorado have the right to do this? Is the process that they followed correct? All of those arguments seem to go in the direction of letting Trump stay on the ballot.”
“I, from painful experience, I don’t usually like to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases based on oral argument. I’m going to make an exception and say this was a slam dunk victory in the offing for the Trump campaign.” (RELATED: ‘I’m Not Gonna Say This Again’: Justice Gorsuch Chides Colorado Lawyer After Leaving Him Tongue-Tied)
The high court seemed unlikely to allow Colorado’s removal of Trump to stand after nearly every justice expressed reservations about allowing a single state to remove the former president.
Justice Elena Kagan asked why a single state would get to decide who gets to be the president of the U.S. and what would happen if state courts decided a different conclusion about whether Trump incited an insurrection than different states.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked Jason Murray, the attorney for Colorado voters, to consider the “plain consequences” of how his position might later be used to advance partisan goals on the other side of the political spectrum.