Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson quickly abandoned her “insurrection” questioning on Thursday when former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell pointed out that the term, although used widely by corporate media, Democrats, and Colorado’s lawyers, does not accurately describe the events of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
The exchange occurred during oral arguments for the presidential frontrunner’s challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s December 2023 ruling affirming Democrats’ decision to remove Trump from the Centennial State’s 2024 primary ballot.
After going back and forth with Mitchell several times about what constitutes eligibility for constitutional disqualification from holding office, Jackson pivoted to the definition of insurrection.
In a question about “the violent attempts of the petitioner’s supporters in this case to ‘halt the count’ on January 6 qualified as an insurrection as defined by Section 3,” Jackson asked Mitchell to clarify his position on whether or not Trump engaged in “insurrection” during the Capitol riot in 2021.
Jackson clearly sourced her framing from the corporate media and Democrats who, mere minutes into the 2021 Capitol riot, deemed the bedlam a criminal product of Trump.
They immediately lumped the patriotic, law-abiding citizens with concerns about the 2020 election’s legitimacy protesting in D.C. with the people who vandalized Capitol property. Big Tech weaponized this mischaracterization to justify its censorship of Trump’s social media calls for peace. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice also adopted the sweeping insurrection accusations as its primary motivation to prosecute any and every one
