Untitled episode

all right a bit more context and Analysis now on the Court's decision to take up the Colorado case let's bring in ABC News legal contributor Asha Rapa Asha good to see you uh let's start by putting this into perspective how delicate of a legal dance is this for the Supreme Court oh boy this is goingon to be a very tough dance for them so look it

was inevitable that this was going to end up at the Supreme Court I do think that what is a little surprising is the speed at which they have arranged for briefing and oral argument which means that they want to get to a decision and I think what we need to look out for is are they going to address the hard question are they really going to

get to the heart of whether the 14th amendment applies to the president of the United States and whether Trump engaged in an Insurrection or will they find some sort of offramp some legal or procedural offramp that will allow them to sidestep the question which again would open a Pandora's Box in terms of you know the states having uh their own approach when you're talking about the

timeline here the the Supreme Court's not hearing this case until February 7th Colorado Republican primary March 5th very close together but I would expect they're going to do this pretty quickly if you think back to Bush Vore that was done in days right they decided that in days so do you expect this will be done in time I think so they you know the Supreme Court

has an interest in ensuring that our government functions um effectively and so the right now what we're in a situation where there's a patchwork of different um approaches to determining eligibility for the ballot happening at different states different decisions coming out of them there has to be some uniformity and so some sort of final decision whether it's on the fact acts um or some sort of

legal determination that this can apply or Not Apply has to be made in order to move forward or there's going to be basically some other constitutional crisis down the line if Trump is on some ballots and not on others that's going to land in their lap anyway so they understand that um and they're going to have to resolve this once and for all you know as

well as anybody else that politics seeps into everything uh do you foresee any kind of scenario here where any justice would recuse themselves particularly any of the three judges appointed by the former president well I think the big question here is Justice Thomas listen we appoint justices uh with life tenure for the purpose of ensuring that they are not going to be influenced by you know

the administration or the party that appointed them they are independent they and we should uh trust that they are Justice Thomas is different because his wife Jenny Thomas you had was involved in many of the facts underlying this very dispute um and one of his former law clerks John Eastman is now in the crosshairs of a January 6th investigation in other words he has a very

personal connection to people who are involved in this that would make his impartiality uh much more questioned than simply the fact that he was appointed by a Republican president right all right Asher andapa thank you so much and we do we do want to mention just as a reminder that President Trump denies all wrongdoing related to January 6th hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking