Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that the laws surrounding former President Trump’s ballot eligibility are “up to the states.”
Asked by ABC News “This Week” co-anchor George Stephanopoulos if her belief Trump engaged in an insurrection means she thinks he’s ineligible to be president, Pelosi said, “Those laws … those are up to the states, they have different laws from state to state.”
“I don’t think he should have ever been president, but nonetheless there is a view of the Constitution in Article 14, Section 3, that he should not be able to run for president,” she continued, in reference to the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.”
“But that’s not the point, the point now is that again, different states have different laws,” she continued. “We don’t think in California that it applied in our state, that’s what the decision was made here.”
Colorado and Maine removed Trump from their 2024 state primary ballots last month, ruling he is ineligible to run for president under the Constitution’s insurrection clause.
The decisions, respectively by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D), concluded Trump participated in an insurrection through his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The Colorado high court ruled he intended to incite political violence and rallied supporters to the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results.
Pelosi on Sunday said she believes Trump engaged in an insurrection, telling Stephanopoulos, “I think that he incited an insurrection, and again, that he [wouldn’t] stop what was going on as his own people said, ‘This is your legacy, smoke coming from the Capitol is your legacy.'”
Earlier in the interview, Pelosi shared an anecdote from inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, claiming she and other congressional leaders urged Trump to request assistance from the National Guard to stop the riots, which continued for hours.
Declining to go into further detail over the 14th Amendment argument, Pelosi said, “What is very clear is that the American people want us to honor our oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Last week, Trump appealed Colorado’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court and appealed Maine’s ruling in the state’s Superior Court. The dispute over Maine’s ruling could ultimately also reach the nation’s highest court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority.
A number of legal experts have offered predictions on how the U.S. Supreme Court could rule, often pointing to the three justices on the bench whom Trump appointed. Last week, Trump’s attorney Alina Habba confirmed the former president’s concern that the justices could rule against him.