Trump's Chicago lawyers allege 'mudslinging' in bid to freeze Illinois ballot challenge in appellate court

Donald Trump’s lawyers in Chicago have ratcheted up the rhetoric in their efforts to keep the former Republican president on the ballot in Illinois next month, accusing lawyers for five voters who object to his candidacy of “uncivil and inappropriate mudslinging.”

A hearing on the bid to knock the 2024 Republican frontrunner off the ballot in Illinois is set for Friday at the Daley Center. Meanwhile, Trump’s attorneys have asked the First District Appellate Court to put the matter on hold pending appeal. They said they did so in hopes of preventing “a wasteful, controversial, and regrettably uncivil spectacle.”

Lawyers for the objecting voters say Trump’s accusations amount to “a bizarre attempt to conjure a ‘genuine emergency’ from his own feigned outrage,” and they counter that Trump “mainly takes issue” with how they characterized his description of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Every forum” that has considered the facts of that day “determined that Trump actively engaged in an insurrection in an effort to illegally hold on to the office of the presidency,” they wrote.

This all comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred when it found in December that Trump is barred from the presidency under the 14th Amendment. The nation’s high court heard arguments on the matter Thursday, and it seems poised to rule in Trump’s favor.

Still, the objecting voters’ lawyers say the U.S. Supreme Court decision will not completely resolve the challenge in Illinois.

Trump’s lawyers previously asked Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter to put the Illinois challenge on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers the Colorado case. Instead, Porter told attorneys to prepare for an in-person hearing Friday at the Daley Center, where she is expected to hear arguments on the merits of the case.

The State Board of Elections rejected the same challenge in a unanimous vote last month, sending the issue into the courts. The national organization Free Speech for People is also involved in the challenge to Trump’s candidacy here.

Trump’s lawyers appealed Porter’s decision last Thursday. The next day, following the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, they formally asked the Illinois appellate court to put the proceedings in Porter’s court on hold. They argued that those objecting to Trump’s candidacy were “trying to goad the Circuit Court into racing the U.S. Supreme Court to a decision on this issue. And the Circuit Court has largely accepted their invitation.”

Trump lawyer Adam Merrill also accused the objectors of making “numerous unprofessional, uncivil, and disparaging remarks” about members of the election board, its general counsel and Trump’s lawyers.

Specifically, Merrill pointed to comments by the objectors’ lawyers that the election board decision — and recommendation by its general counsel — was “shocking and highly questionable” and “was not an earnest interpretation of the law.”

Merrill also pointed to a comment that one of Trump’s lawyers made a “completely dishonest” presentation to the state board that was “an intentional falsehood — or in plain English, a lie.”

Trump’s team called that a “marked departure” from litigation in other states that has “until now avoided impugning the integrity and honesty of election officials and opposing counsel.”

Still, lawyers are always tasked with zealously advocating for their clients.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the objecting voters noted Tuesday that neither the election board nor its counsel has taken issue with their arguments. As for Trump, they say the former president “has taken a shocking position in these proceedings, one that mirrors his shocking positions in many of the other courtrooms in which he is litigating, and outside them.

“He has attempted to rewrite history, recast the clear evidence that Jan. 6 resulted in attackers violently overtaking the Capitol and disrupting certification of the 2020 presidential election, and sanitize the decisive evidence of his involvement in the events of that day,” attorney Caryn Lederer wrote.

Lederer also noted that “a federal grand jury has found probable cause to indict Trump for criminally conspiring and engaging in misconduct related to the invasion of Congress and the interference with the certification of the electoral vote.”

“Objectors neither act unprofessionally nor uncivilly by accurately describing Trump’s intentional falsehoods, backed by citations to a robust record,” she wrote.