Donald Trump fears Supreme Court could back Colorado's decision to take him off the ballot, report says

• Donald Trump fears that the Supreme Court could side with Colorado and take him off the ballot.
• Trump has appealed Colorado and Maine's decisions to disqualify him.
• GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie said the decisions made the ex-president into a "martyr."

Donald Trump fears that the Supreme Court could side with Colorado and take him off the ballot.

Colorado voted to remove Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot in a shock move, saying he was ineligible for the White House under the US Constitution's insurrection clause.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows also declared Trump was ineligible to stand in the state, citing the 14th Amendment in her 34-page decision.

Trump filed an appeal against Maine's decision to a state court, but he appealed to the Supreme Court on the Colorado case.

The former president has privately told some people that he thinks the Supreme Court will rule in his favor, The New York Times reported, citing a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

Nevertheless, Trump has some concerns that the judges, three of whom he appointed, will want to avoid coming across as "political" and so may go against him, the report adds.

Former President Trump's attorney Alina Habba echoed this in an interview with Fox News.

"That's a concern that he's voiced to me, he's voiced to everybody publicly, not privately. And I can tell you that his concern is a valid one," Habba said.

She said that Republicans could "sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump" as "they feel that even if the law is on our side, they may appear to be swayed."

"They're trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call," she added.

Don't make him a martyr, says Christie

In her decision to rule Trump ineligible to appear on Maine's ballot, Bellows wrote that Trump had "used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power."

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie on Friday hit out at the decision, saying that the move turned the ex-president into a "martyr."

"You know, he's very good at playing 'Poor me, poor me,' he's always complaining. The poor billionaire from New York who's spending everybody else's money to pay his legal fees," he added.

In response to the decision, a spokesperson for Trump called Bellows a "virulent leftist" and a "hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat."

"We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter," the statement said. "Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy."

Colorado also cited the January 6 attack in its decision, saying Trump violated the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The 14th Amendment specifies that anyone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or has "given aid or comfort" to those carrying out an insurrection is ineligible to run for office.