By Jack Queen
(Reuters) -A trial began on Monday in Colorado to determine whether former U.S. President Donald Trump is disqualified from the state's ballot in the 2024 election over his purported role in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol aimed at keeping him in office.
The one-week trial before a Denver judge could also be a test of whether Trump's opponents elsewhere have a viable path to keep him off the ballot under a rarely-used, Civil War-era provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars people who have engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" from holding federal office.
Trump faces similar lawsuits brought by advocacy groups in Michigan and Minnesota, but the Colorado case is the first to go to trial.
Trump, a Republican, has denied wrongdoing during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters who wanted to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's November 2020 presidential election win.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, Eric Olson, said in his opening statement in court that Trump urged his supporters to violence in a speech before the riot and continued to encourage them on social media.
"He used 'fight' 20 times in that speech, 'peacefully' only once," Olson said.
A lawyer for Trump, Scott Gesler, denied that Trump incited supporters to violence and said it would set a dangerous precedent to disqualify him based on "legal theories that have never been embraced by a state or federal court."
"People should be able to run for office and shouldn't be punished for their speech," Gesler told the court.
Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to opinion polls, in what is expected to be a rematch next year with Biden. Trump's campaign has said the "absurd" lawsuit and others like it are "stretching the law beyond recognition."
LONG-SHOT LEGAL STRATEGY
His opponents hope to deny Trump a path to victory by disqualifying him in enough hotly-contested states, but many legal experts call the strategy a long shot. Colorado is regarded as safely Democratic by nonpartisan election forecasters.
The cases raise largely untested legal questions, and even if the plaintiffs prevail, the final say would likely rest with a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three Trump appointees.
The Colorado lawsuit seeks to bar the state's top election official from putting Trump on the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which was established in the aftermath of the Civil War to prevent former Confederate rebels from taking federal office.
Trump spent weeks ahead of the Jan. 6 riot spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud and encouraging his supporters to rally in Washington. He then encouraged them to march on the Capitol and only after hours of violence did he appeal to the rioters to go home.
The advocacy group that brought the lawsuit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump "incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection" by encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol and prevent the certification of Biden's win.
Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace has denied five separate bids by Trump and his allies to dismiss the case, most recently on Oct. 25, when she rejected Trump's arguments that courts do not have the power to determine eligibility for office.
Trump faces several legal cases as he campaigns for the presidency. A civil fraud trial in a lawsuit by New York state against Trump and his family company is in its fourth week.
He has pleaded not guilty to four criminal indictments, including federal cases tied to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and the removal and mishandling of classified government documents when he left office in January 2021.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; editing by Amy Stevens and Grant McCool)