Cook County Judge Disgraced Court In Antidemocratic Ruling Kicking Trump Off Illinois Ballot – UPDATED – Wirepoints

Update 3/4/24: The United States Supreme Court today unanimously overturned the Colorado decision copied by the Illinois court, thereby overruling the Illinois decision as well. Full Court opinion here.

Update 3/1/24: Cook County Judge Tracie Porter today modified her removal order  to state that it is stayed until the appeal is “finally resolved by the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, the Illinois Supreme Court, and/or the U.S. Supreme Court.” Furthermore, the new order directs that “the Illinois State Board of Elections shall continue to include Candidate Donald J. Trump on the ballot for the March 19, 2024, General Primary Election” until the appeal is resolved.

By: Mark Glennon*

A Cook County judge ruled Wednesday to eliminate Illinoisans’ right to vote in November for the presidential candidate most Americans currently favor — Donald Trump.

That’s a different but correct way to state what the judge did. On its face, the ruling said Trump lost his right to be on the ballot because he participated in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., but the plain fact is that the public’s right to vote for Trump was also denied by the ruling.

Despite the gravity of that antidemocratic result, the court did none of its own fact-finding or legal analysis to make its decision. It simply parroted a similar December decision by the Colorado Supreme Court — a decision that set no precedent binding on an Illinois court. The Illinois court merely did a “cut-and-paste” job with the Colorado decision, law professor Jonathan Turley rightly said.  That’s indeed about all the Illinois 39-page ruling by Cook County Judge Tracie Porter is — a cut-and-paste job.

Nor did the court address any of the criticisms leveled against the Colorado decision in dissenting opinions and commentary. Most importantly, Judge Porter did not address, and showed no concern over, the harsh questioning of the Colorado decision leveled by U.S. Supreme Court justices during oral arguments in the appeal over it

It’s in that appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the Colorado case that sanity will be restored and the grandstanding of Judge Porter will be exposed. The top Court, legal analysts agree, will almost certainly overrule the Colorado decision, which would also void the Illinois decision. The Supreme Court ruling may even be unanimous because it was the liberal judges who leveled the toughest questions during oral arguments. Justice Elena Kagan, for example, asked why one state should be able to disqualify a candidate from the ballot and, thereby effectively determine who becomes the president of the United States? Rather than sounding like an issue for an individual state to decide, she said, that “sounds awfully national to me.”

It’s also because of that appeal that there’s no need to rehash the specific matters at issue in the case, many of which are complex or novel. Countless news pieces and opinion articles on that are easily found.

What’s important is that the Supreme Court will resolve those issues predisposed toward a democratic result, as it should, and as it clearly indicated it would during oral arguments. That’s the key, overriding principle. Judge Porter’s ruling, however, shows no remorse over democracy lost.

But there’s one thing I haven’t seen discussed that merits special attention. For the facts that allegedly prove Trump’s participation in the insurrection, Judge Porter, as mentioned, relied on the Colorado court’s findings, which were made by a trial court there.

And guess who that trial court relied on for some of its fact-finding? The U.S. House Select Committee on January 6th. “[T]he Court holds that the January 6th Report is reliable and trustworthy and thereby admissible,” says the trial court’s order, and that committee’s work was frequently cited in its ruling and on appeal.

That should go in the “you’ve gotta be kidding” file. The January 6 Committee was a made-for-TV, Soviet-style show trial that denied any semblance of due process. No defense or counter explanations and statements were allowed. The committee hired a former ABC news boss to produce its prime time TV special covering its hearing. The only two Republicans on the committee were Trump haters Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  For more than two years, the surveillance film of the Capitol riot, to which the committee had full access, was hidden from the public and defendants. A new house committee is trying to recover 117 encrypted files that the now-disbanded Jan. 6 Committee deleted before Republicans took the majority last year. Former committee staffers lashed out at Liz Cheney and the committee for withholding key findings in its report. “We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public,” said one former committee staffer. “But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.” From start to finish the committee was a farce that the public saw through. Opinion polls about Trump and his alleged participation in the riot change little because of the committee.

Yet it’s that committee’s finding on which Judge Porter indirectly relied, in significant part, to void any vote for Trump.

Decide what you want about Trump and whether he participated in an insurrection, but remember who would deny you the right to vote based on what you decide.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.