Opinion: What this judge said about Trump is bone-chilling | CNN

A Colorado judge ruled last week that former President Donald Trump “engaged in an insurrection” on January 6, 2021, as defined by Section 3 of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment. She didn’t disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot, however, finding that the “insurrectionist ban” in the 14th Amendment does not apply to US presidents.

Everything else about Trump in her ruling was bone-chilling.

District Judge Sarah Wallace wrote that Trump had played a role in this insurrection “through incitement” of the crowd during his infamous speech at the White House Ellipse. She gave examples such as Trump telling his supporters some 20 times before the January 6 attack to “fight.” And he goaded his supporters into action with lines like, “You will have an illegitimate president … We can’t let that happen.”

“Such incendiary rhetoric,” the judge noted, coming from “a speaker who routinely embraced political violence and had inflamed the anger of his supporters leading up to the certification, was likely to incite imminent lawlessness and disorder.”

At the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, an insurrection was “understood to refer to any public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the execution of law,” wrote Wallace in her 102-page opinion. The “events on and around January 6, 2021, easily satisfy this definition of ‘insurrection,’” she concluded.