In a brief filed on Thursday, Donald Trump's lawyers urge the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the claim that he is disqualified from running for president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment because he "engaged in insurrection" by inciting the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Their arguments echo the points they made in their petition asking the justices to review the Colorado Supreme Court's December 19 decision to that effect. Among other things, the new brief fleshes out Trump's rebuttal of the premise that his conduct on January 6 can accurately be described as engaging in an "insurrection" against "the Constitution of the United States."
That section of the brief is highly misleading in some respects, minimizing the recklessness of Trump's pre-riot speech and his inexcusable dereliction of duty after the assault on the Capitol began. Those actions and inactions rightly led to Trump's impeachment by the House and should have resulted in his conviction by the Senate, which would have barred him from running for president again. But it does not necessarily follow that they amounted to engaging in an insurrection, and Trump's lawyers offer several cogent reasons to reject that assessment.
