JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri’s top election chief said former President Donald Trump will be on the November ballot in the Show-Me State if Republican voters choose him as their nominee in the state’s March 2 presidential caucuses.
A day after the Colorado Supreme Court declared Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said he wants to clarify what will happen next year in the Show-Me State.
“The State of Missouri will reject what happened in the Colorado Supreme Court. The people of this state will make a decision as to who they want to be president of the United States,” he said.
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Ashcroft’s comments come as he seeks the Republican nomination for governor in the 2024 election against Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring.
Speaking to reporters at his office near the state Capitol, Ashcroft questioned the Colorado ruling, arguing along the same lines of a lower court decision that said Trump could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that a provision in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to cover the presidency.
Ashcroft, who is an attorney, said language in the 14th Amendment refers to “officers of the United States” who take an oath to “support” the Constitution, meaning it must not apply to the president, who is not included as an “officer of the United States” elsewhere in the document and whose oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
“The reasoning, and I hate to use the word reasoning, of the Colorado Supreme Court was in error,” Ashcroft said. “You have to go with what the law says.”
Ashcroft did not directly address whether Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but said the Colorado case did not allow the Republican frontrunner for the nomination to defend himself.
Ashcroft intends to file a brief in support of Trump when the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court as expected.
“The Supreme Court is not going to uphold it,” he said.
Eigel and Kehoe weighed in on social media with both also predicting the nation’s high court will reverse the Colorado decision.
“This is outrageous! Citizens pick presidents, not unelected liberal justices. This nonsense will quickly be overturned,” Eigel posted on X.
Added Kehoe, “Voters have the right to decide who our President is, not unelected liberal judges.”
