Comment by kdavis

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump engaged in insurrection as a matter of fact. That is, they deemed it so obvious from the evidence presented (much of which was publicly available) that it didn't require a trial for determination.

This was appealed to the US Supreme Court, who didn't rule that this wasn't true, they ruled that the 14th amendment needs to be applied by Congress for reasons of consistency across states... which sidestepped the entire issue and was a dereliction of duty in my opinion, in the sense that they are the highest court and could have ruled on the issue of insurrection, or at least required some kind of jury proceeding at that time. They basically didn't do their one job.

Then Jack Smith later amassed a case about it, with grand jury approval. He ran out of time to try and convict Trump before he was elected, basically published a summary report of his case. Recently he testified before a congressional committee about it and asserted he was extremely confident Trump would have been convicted. He testified that he never consulted with Biden about the case, and asked that the rest of his materials from his investigation be publicly released.

Legally speaking there is a strong argument that Trump engaged in insurrection; he's just been shielded from the consequences by political maneuvers and poor timing.

Put differently, one state supreme court decided he so obviously engaged in it that it didn't require a trial. Another federal attorney presented his evidence to a grand jury and they decided he was likely to succeed if it went to trial.

My personal belief is historians will look at the evidence presented and conclude that US Congress made catastrophic mistakes by not impeaching Trump the first time (for obstruction of justice first, and insurrection second), and that SCOTUS made an equally catastrophic mistake (or corrupt decision) by not ruling on insurrection as the highest federal court, either on its own or with a grand jury trial.