President Trump secured another legal victory in the mounting frivolous lawsuits to keep him off primary ballots, attempting to utilize the insurrection clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Trump extended his winning streak in Michigan.

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision that Trump is eligible for the state’s primary ballot.

“Nothing in the statutory framework that controls the process for presidential primary elections confers any authority on the Secretary of State to make eligibility determinations or to refuse to place a candidate on that particular ballot based on an eligibility determination,” the three-judge panel wrote, The Epoch Times reports.

“Who to place on the primary ballot is determined by the political parties and the individual candidates,” the panel added, according to NBC News.

“President Trump remains undefeated against these frivolous legal claims and has never been in a stronger position to win next year’s election,” Donald Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.

Read the full statement:

NBC News reports:

The court further said Trump’s possible spot on a general election ballot was not ripe for consideration.

The two-sentence clause in the 14th Amendment has been used only a handful of times since the years after the Civil War. It’s likely that one of the lawsuits challenging Trump eventually will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the insurrection clause.

The Michigan court decision was similar to one from the Minnesota Supreme Court, which said Trump could stay on that state’s primary ballot there because the election is a party-run contest.

In one of the Michigan lawsuits, the anti-Trump plaintiffs included Bob LaBrant, a longtime Republican who was a lawyer and political strategist for decades at the state Chamber of Commerce.

Per The Epoch Times:

After the Michigan Court of Claims ruled last month to keep President Trump on the state’s primary ballot in response to activists suing the state, arguing he was disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an appeal swiftly followed, filed in both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court.

On Dec. 6, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a surprising rejection to hear the case on an expedited basis, ordering the parties to proceed in the appeals court first.

One judge dissented, given the timely nature of the matter and the court’s inevitable eventual involvement. But he also gave entirely contrary opinion to the Court of Claims, writing that he would have remanded it back to that court to do an evidentiary hearing. If that had happened, Michigan would have, like Colorado, proceeded to rule on whether the former president “engaged” in an “insurrection” and whether that was reason to remove him from the state’s primary ballot.

There were three separate lawsuits against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson: one brought by local community advocate Robert Davis, another by activist group Free Speech for People representing a small group of local voters, and one brought by President Trump, who had not been allowed to participate as an intervenor in the initial case.

 

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