WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former President Donald Trump and his legal team filed an appeal Tuesday seeking to overturn a recent decision from Maine’s Secretary of State to remove the GOP frontrunner from the 2024 primary ballot.
The decision from Maine came about two weeks after Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to remove Trump from their primary ballot.
Maine’s decision by the Secretary of State will be appealed to a state court. However, in Colorado, an appeal of the state’s Supreme Court decision is set to head to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Multiple reports Wednesday evening suggest Trump’s team has appealed the Colorado case by asking SCOTUS to intervene.
Both appeals come as no surprise to experts.
“This is typical Donald Trump. He’s going to take anything that goes against him and turn it into a lawsuit. He’s been doing it for years and years, this is his M.O,” said Dr. Todd Belt, Professor and Director of the Political Management Master’s Program at George Washington University. “But it also does something else- it helps him make himself into a martyr. As he said repeatedly on the stump, they’re out to get me and they’re coming after me because they can’t get you.”
Belt says Trump and his legal team are looking to stop the dominos from falling. He adds that the best way to do that is with an injunction by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Appealing the state Supreme Court ruling is the fastest way he can get to the U.S. Supreme Court and therefore put a stop to any other states that might have an idea to do this,” said Belt.
Belt says SCOTUS prefers handling these types of cases “very, very quickly.”
“The reason that they do that is because they want to at least appear that they’re not involved in the political process whatsoever,” said Belt.
Even though the Colorado case is bound for SCOTUS, Belt says what happens in Maine is still very important, given the impact it can have this November.
“Colorado is a state that probably wasn’t going to vote for Donald Trump no matter what. It has ten electoral votes and he wasn’t going to get those, and frankly, he doesn’t need them to win the Electoral College,” said Belt. “Maine has four and they split their electoral votes and Donald Trump won one of those last time. One electoral vote might make the difference, but this isn’t really about one electoral vote. This is really about stopping other states from doing the same thing,” he added.