Skip to main contentAttorneys for former President Donald Trump filed a 162-page brief with the Oregon Supreme Court on Dec. 29, arguing that efforts to block him from the state’s ballot, led by Portland lawyers Dan Meek and Jason Kafoury, are “inappropriate.”
The top court in Colorado and Maine’s secretary of state have agreed that Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and therefore disqualifies him from the ballot in those states. But Trump’s attorneys argue in their filing that the argument is incorrect: “President Trump simply did not violate Section 3,” they write. “The events of Jan. 6 included serious crimes and violence by others, but they did not amount to an ‘insurrection’ within the meaning of the 14th Amendment.”
The filing was first reported by The Oregonian.
Todd Sprague, a spokesman for the Oregon Judicial Department, says the court has asked both parties to submit supplemental briefs by Jan. 9. At issue for those briefs: whether the plaintiffs in the case have standing and exactly what authority Secretary of State Lavonne Griffin-Valade, Oregon’s top elections official, has in the matter.
The court will render its decision some time after that.