The Excerpt podcast: Court says Trump disqualified from 2024 primary ballot in Colorado

On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: The Colorado Supreme Court rules that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from the 2024 primary ballot in Colorado. A witness in the House GOP impeachment inquiry says there's no evidence President Joe Biden was involved in family business dealings. USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard discusses the sexual assault of hostages in Gaza. Sandra Day O'Connor was remembered in Washington. An El Niño storm drenches Southern California.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath that. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Wednesday, December 20th, 2023. This is The Excerpt.

Today a court says former President Donald Trump has been disqualified from the 2024 primary ballot in Colorado. Plus we hear the latest from Republicans impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and we discuss the sexual assault of hostages in Gaza.

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Colorado Supreme Court yesterday ruled that former President Donald Trump may not appear on the state's presidential primary ballot next year. It's the first time a court has embraced the theory that he disqualified himself from a second term by attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The Colorado court voted 4-3 and said it would stay its own ruling until January, giving Trump time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump is almost certain to do so, which would put a historic question before the nation's highest court.

At issue is the wording of the Constitution's insurrection clause and whether the former president incited an insurrection when his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. A Colorado district judge last month held that Trump engaged in an insurrection by inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol, but that the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment that disqualifies certain officials involved with insurrection did not apply to a president.

The Colorado Supreme Court has now reversed that. The Colorado Court is the first to rule explicitly against Trump on the issue. Courts in several other states including Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire have shot down similar legal claims in recent weeks.

Republican investigators leading the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden interviewed another witness yesterday as they hunt for evidence showing that Biden financially benefited from his family's business dealings. The committee interviewed Carol Fox, a trustee for Americore, the now bankrupt healthcare company. She was asked about her knowledge of the president's brother, James Biden, and a $600,000 loan given to him by Americore. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the interview, Fox said she had no knowledge that the president was directly involved with those dealings. Americore gave James Biden the loan after he made a promise to the financially struggling company that he could secure funding from the Middle East by leveraging his family name. Fox identified no services that James Biden ever provided to Americore. After he did not follow through on that promise, Fox filed a lawsuit against him. The two parties eventually agreed on a $350,000 settlement.

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Before we get to this next story, a warning that the following interview references explicit acts of sexual violence. Doctors who have been treating released hostages from Hamas captivity say that some suffered violent sexual assaults while they were held captive. I spoke with USA Today world affairs correspondent, Kim Hjelmgaard, for more.

Kim, always good to have you on. Thanks for making the time.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So what do we know about the sexual assault that some of these hostages suffered?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

A lot of the information is in flux around this topic, and so we need to be super careful and I think that's really important to stress at the outset. But I think what we can say with some confidence is that slowly over time, we're getting more and more of a picture about what appears to have happened to some of the released hostages while they were being held by Hamas. A lot of this information comes from some of the doctors that have been treating them, also from the Israeli authorities.

The main thing we can say is that the hostages went through a lot of different types of trauma and abuse. There was food being withheld, there was medicines being withheld. There was different psychological, for lack of a better word, torture involved.

And in terms of sexual assault, we do have to be somewhat careful because the evidence on this is still emerging. But what some of the doctors that have been treating these freed hostages have told me, they're fairly confident that the majority of these women have been assaulted in some fashion and that there is severe sexual assault, rape involved. The reason I'm being so careful in the way that we describe this is because these doctors are also very deliberate and careful to point out that the evidence for sexual assault really does take time to emerge.

And so in the collective public imagination, there may be some thoughts that there would be obvious physical signs of this abuse that these hostages have come back with. But it really is evidence testimony from what they're being told that is coming out in kind of fits and starts. And so the doctors that I've been talking to for this story, they believe that many of the women between the early teens and mid to late 40s were sexually assaulted in some fashion.

Taylor Wilson:

Kim, can we expect any independent investigation into this? I know the UN Commissioner for Human Rights has claimed that Israel blocked his team's investigators.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

So in terms of the independent investigations that many people have called for into this area, a lot of that is pointed directly at October 7th in terms of the evidence that there is. And I have to say the physical forensic evidence around that event is far more clear in terms of the abuse that went on. There's photographic evidence, there's video evidence. Some of this video evidence and photographic evidence is from Hamas itself.

And then in terms of the physical forensic evidence, the bodies and the conditions that the bodies were left in, and many of these bodies were mutilated. Many of these bodies had obvious signs of sexual assault, genital mutilation. We're talking about clothing that was ripped. And an independent investigation into that evidence is what the UN has been asking for.

For one reason or another, Israel has been reluctant to let those investigators have access to the evidence, and it relates to some mistrust from Israel about the UN, whether it is truly independent when it comes to Israel. UN of course completely rejects that idea.

Taylor Wilson:

The Biden administration has really been trying to toe a line in this conflict. Are we hearing from them at all about this sexual violence we've been talking about?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes. President Biden and others in the US administration have been calling for this evidence to be taken seriously, for there to be more discussion around this evidence, and frankly, for Israeli women to be believed on this topic. And one of the difficulties is that many of the women who were abused by Hamas on that day, they're all dead. There's virtually no women who survived those attacks, who have been able to come forward to give their testimony to Israeli investigators to say what happened.

Over the last few weeks there has been a little bit of testimony from some people who survived, men mostly, who overheard things that were happening on that day or were a witness to it in some form. But in terms of the many, many women who were abused and killed on October 7th, they are not here to provide that evidence.

Taylor Wilson:

And Kim, have we heard any response from Hamas about this?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

On one side of their mouth they deny that that sexual assaults took place. At the same time some of their political leaders have said at various times over the last several months that they want to see an October 7th type of attack happen again and again and again. Over the last couple of days, Israel has published a little bit of testimony that it has received from captured Hamas fighters in which these Hamas people acknowledged that they were under instructions to do whatever they wanted to the civilian population in these areas, and indeed to carry out sexual assault.

Taylor Wilson:

Kim Hjelmgaard covers world news for USA Today. Thank you, Kim.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE and online at online.rainn.org.

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Sandra Day O'Connor, at her funeral service yesterday was remembered as a pioneer and pragmatic jurist who shaped the law always with an eye toward the court's impact on Americans.

President Joe Biden:

Sandra Day O'Connor, daughter of the American West, was a pioneer in her own right, breaking down the barriers in legal and political worlds and the nation's consciousness.

Taylor Wilson:

That's President Joe Biden.

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts also spoke. With the other eight members of the Supreme Court seated in front of him, he joked that the high court was like family composed entirely of in-laws. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, O'Connor would become one of the court's most influential justices able to find middle ground in legal issues like abortion and civil rights during nearly 25 years on the bench. She died earlier this month of complications related to dementia and a respiratory illness. Sandra Day O'Connor was 93.

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The winter season's first significant storm is set to drench Southern California over the next few days, bringing heavy rain and flooding threats to millions. It's the region's first El Nino influence storm of the season, one that's fueled by an atmospheric river of moisture according to the National Weather Service. AccuWeather forecasters said it's expected to be the biggest rainstorm for the area since Hurricane Hillary dumped up to half a foot of rain in August. A flood watch will be in effect this time for some 22 million people.

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And today is Go Caroling Day, a time to spread some holiday cheer from door to door.

And before we go, stay tuned at 4:00 PM for my colleague, Dana Taylor's special episode on social justice activist, Ady Barkan's remarkable Life and Impact. Ady passed away from ALS last month at the age of 39.

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt: Court says Trump disqualified from primary ballot in CO