it through enforcement, professor american history at yale university, and steven levitskiy is a professor of history at harvard university. two days before judge michael luttig got a phone call that may have changed the course of history for this nation. then, a capitol police officer who risked his life on january six is hoping to serve his country to different way, this time as an elected official. plus i will talk to california colorado secretary of state janet griswold on the heels of the decision to see whether trump is eligible to be on the stage primary ballot. another hour of velshi starts right now. good morning, it s saturday december the six. i m ali velshi. it s been three years since that mob attacked the united states capitol as part of donald trump s desperate attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election. that attack lasted only a few hours, but the long shadow of the violent insurrection continues to loom large over american dem
president. and after the colorado supreme court disqualified donald trump from the ballot, they are asking the supreme court to stay out of the federal election case. how is this playing out in the 2024 case. evan, the colorado supreme court said last night that trump is not eligible to be on colorado s ballot because the 14th amendment to the u.s. constitution bans insurrectionists from holding office. the u.s. supreme court is going to decide whether that ruling stands ultimately. what might this mean for the 2024 election? well, jake, what it means is that it puts the supreme court squarely in possibly deciding how this election goes forward, right? not since the bush v gore decision in 2000 have we had the supreme court in the middle of an election race. you look at the timeline that we have ahead of us, the former president has until january 4th to file an appeal. we don t anticipate he will do that for a few days, but we think he will go to the supreme court, because
fundamentally disagree that there should be some carve out in the constitution for the president. donald trump should not be above the law, above the constitution. a president should not have that type of power. it would set an extremely dangerous precedent to say that a president can break whatever law reconstitution prison that they want to as president. that is what would really lead us to a downward spiral and a degrading of democracy like we ve never seen before in this country. in the last hour, i spoke with a colleague from maine, secretary of state janet pelosi concluded that section three and four of the 14th amendment is self executing, meaning that a criminal prosecution is not necessary in this case to determine whether donald trump is disqualified. however, as you just pointed out, there was not a criminal prosecution in this case, but there was a process, a very robust process, in colorado and in maine that determined that donald trump engaged in insurrection. so we are
the united states supreme court, well, the process was unfair. that is not how it works! just because you choose not to engage does not mean it wasn t fair. and it s just the characteristic of trump. he wants all of the rules to bend towards him and his whatever is the best outcome for him, he wants to manipulate the situation. that is not how courts work. so it was a robust process at the trial level, and then there was an appeal to the colorado supreme court, and of course last word will be had by the united states supreme court oral arguments on february 8th. and we will talk again. thank you as always as being such a good friend to our show and making things so clear to our viewers. jena griswold is the secretary of state for colorado. still ahead this hour, the judge michael luttig had preserve democracy on january six. he did it from a standing room table. judge luttig is going to join me next with his remarkable story. maybe i can get him to do it from the dining room table li
so i think it was evident from the beginning that any challenge to his candidacy would be litigated. you know, i do think it is important to say that no matter what happens, whether he is on the ballot or disqualified from the ballot, that is not the end of this saga. democracy will not die because some court decision. americans have all of the power giving the world at the ballot box next year, and i m so confident in the american voter. i m sure that we will hold on to democracy past the next election. but you are of the view and sort of opposition to a number of political pundits who have been on to say that there are people who have said, this is the wrong way to do it, that getting rid of donald trump should be done at the ballot box as a political process. you showed the view of most legal minds, including judge luttig, who i will speak to a few moments that the law is the law, the constitution of the constitution. the way that you run elections