The Texas lawyer Donald Trump was hired to help his appeal to stay on Colorado’s 2024 primary ballot will argue his case at the US Supreme Court this week.
Jonathan Mitchell will represent Trump before the justices in the special sitting Feb. 8, the court announced Monday.
Trump is asking the court to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove him from the form for the Republican primary on March 5 primary. The state Supreme Court said Trump was disqualified because he initiated the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol in violation of the Constitution’s insurrection clause.
Mitchell, an Austin-based attorney who taught at Stanford and the University of Texas School of Law, is best-known for creating a novel six-week abortion ban in Texas that left enforcement to private citizens. The argument will be his sixth appearance before the court. He is also arguing a case on Feb. 28 challenging the federal ban on bump stocks, a device that attaches to a gun to let it fire rapidly like a machine gun.
The University of Chicago law graduate will face off against court newcomer Jason Murray, a Colorado trial attorney, who will make his debut before the justices. Murray is representing the voters who sued to keep Trump off the ballot.
A partner at Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray LLC in Denver, Murray is a Harvard law graduate who clerked for Justice Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court and Justice Neil Gorsuch when he was on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
The court on Friday agreed to extend the argument from 60 to 80 minutes and give Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson time at the lecturer as well.