National Roundup

Colorado
Trump argues First Amendment protects him from being barred from 2024 ballot
DENVER (AP) — Attorneys for former President Donald Trump argue  that an attempt to bar him from the 2024 ballot under a rarely used “insurrection” clause of the Constitution should be dismissed as a violation of his freedom of speech.

The lawyers made the argument in a filing posted Monday by a Colorado court in the most significant of a series of challenges to Trump’s candidacy under the Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment. The challenges rest on Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his role leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“At no time do Petitioners argue that President Trump did anything other than engage in either speaking or refusing to speak for their argument that he engaged in the purported insurrection,” wrote attorney Geoffrey Blue.

Trump also will argue that the clause doesn’t apply to him because “the Fourteenth Amendment applies to one who ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion,’ not one who only ‘instigated’ any action,” Blue wrote.

The former president’s lawyers also said the challenge should be dismissed because he is not yet a candidate under the meaning of Colorado election law, which they contend isn’t intended to settle constitutional disputes.

The motion under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP law, which shields people from lawsuits that harass them for behavior protected by the First Amendment, will be the first of the 14th Amendment challenges filed in multiple states to be considered in open court. It was filed late Friday and posted by the court Monday.

Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace has scheduled a hearing on the motion for Oct. 13. A hearing on the constitutional issues will come on Oct. 30.

Whatever Wallace rules, the issue is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never heard a case on the provision of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, three years after the Civil War ended. The clause has only been used a handful of times.

Section Three of the amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. Its initial intent was to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress and taking over the government.

Trump’s contention that he is protected by freedom of speech mirrors his defense in criminal cases charging him for his role in the Jan. 6 attack. There, too, he argues he was simply trying to bring attention to what he believed was an improper election — even though dozens of lawsuits challenging the results had already been rejected.

Prosecutors in those cases and some legal experts have noted that Trump’s offenses go beyond speech, to acts such as trying to organize slates of fake electors that Congress could have recognized to make him president again.

Utah
Jailhouse letter adds wrinkle in case of mom accused of killing husband, then writing kids’ book
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Jailhouse writings by a Utah mother accused of killing her husband, then writing a children’s book about death, have led prosecutors to accuse her of trying to tamper with witnesses, an allegation that her attorneys say is baseless.

A relative of Kouri Richins meanwhile went public in an interview Friday to assert her innocence — a development foretold by Richins’ writings filed in court days earlier. In that letter, which was found in a textbook in her jail cell, Kouri Richins wrote that her attorney, Skye Lazaro, would arrange for “my girls” to do an interview with “Good Morning America.”

“We know Kouri is innocent. And all of that is going to come out in court. And I think that’s going to shock people,” said her brother, identified only as “DJ” in the “Good Morning America” interview.

Lazaro did not return phone and email messages Friday seeking clarification on whether “DJ” is the same brother who Richins referred to as “Ronney” in the letter.

“When I got the news that Eric died, I broke down into tears. He was a good guy. I mean, he lived life to the extreme and eventually it got him,” the brother said in the televised interview.

Prosecutors say Kouri Richins, 33, poisoned Eric Richins, 39, by slipping five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow mule cocktail she made for him last year.

After her husband’s death, the mother of three self-published a children’s book titled “Are You With Me?” about a deceased father wearing angel wings who watched over his sons. She promoted the book on TV and radio, describing the book as a way to help children grieve the loss of a loved one.

Richins’ attorneys point out that no drugs were found at the family home after her husband’s death. They’ve also suggested that a witness, a housekeeper who says she sold Kouri Richins the drugs, had motivation to lie as she sought leniency in the face of state and federal drug charges.

Prosecutors on Sept. 15 filed a six-page, handwritten document they say Kouri Richins wrote and that a sheriff’s deputy found in her cell in a prep book for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), according to court documents.

In the document, on which “Walk The Dog!!” is written in large letters at the top of the first page, Richins suggests a scenario in which “Ronney” would have talked with her husband about his “Mexico trips” to get “pain pills & fentanyl.”

“Reword this however he needs to, to make the point. Just include it all,” reads the document. Apparently addressed to Richins’ mother, the document closes by calling her “the best mom in the whole world!”

Prosecutors allege the document outlines potential witness tampering. Richins’ attorneys countered that those are “unsupported conclusions.”

Prosecutors have decided not to seek the death penalty against Richins after conferring with the victim’s father and two sisters.

A judge earlier this year ordered Richins to remain in jail pending trial.

Prosecutors say Richins planned at length to kill her husband, making financial arrangements and purchasing drugs found in his system after his March 2022 death.

Richins made major changes to the family’s estate plans and took out life insurance policies on him with benefits totaling nearly $2 million, prosecutors allege. Her attorneys counter that the prosecution’s case based on financial motives proved she was “bad at math,” not guilty of murder.

Richins, meanwhile, is facing a lawsuit seeking over $13 million in damages for alleged financial wrongdoing before and after his death.

The lawsuit filed in state court by Katie Richins, the sister of Eric Richins, accuses Kouri Richins of taking money from her husband’s accounts, diverting money intended to pay his taxes and obtaining a fraudulent loan, among other things, before his death.