(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Leftist Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace refused to recuse herself in the latest lawfare attack being waged against former President Donald Trump as the state’s highly partisan top election official seeks to keep him off the ballot.
Concerns arose after evidence showed that Wallace had contributed money to ActBlue, the campaign-finance aggregator that redirects funds to Democrat candidates in campaigns across the nation while helping to mask the sources of its dark-money donations.
Records from the Federal Election Commission indicate that between April 2018 and November 2022, Wallace—who was a lawyer at the time, not a judge—made eight separate donations totalling $1,500. Six of those ($500 total) went to ActBlue.
Wallace also contributed to Democrats in state races—including $250 to Secretary of State Jena Griswold; $500 to Attorney General Phil Weiser and $200 to former Gov. John Hickenlooper, now a U.S. senator—according to Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
Gov. Jared Polis nominated her to the bench in August 2022. Two of her political donations came after the nomination but before she formally began her role as a judge in January 2023.
One of these was a $100 contribution earmarked for Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in November 2022. A month earlier, she also sent $100 to the Colorado Turnout Project, an activist group with the stated goal of removing Republicans from state-level offices and “turn[ing] Colorado blue once and for all.”
The group formed “after Colorado Republicans refused to condemn the political extremists who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” and purportedly aimed to “prevent violent insurrections by addressing this problem at its source.”
Wallace now insists she does not “specifically” remember making the donation, that she did not understand the group’s true intentions and that, instead, it was her intention to donate to a specific candidate, not the PAC as a whole.
“I have no specific memory of this contribution,” she said.
“I do not dispute that in October 2022, prior to taking the bench, I apparently made a $100 contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project,” she continued. “That being said, prior to yesterday, I was not cognizant of this organization or its mission.”
She also argued that, despite donating to an organization founded to “prevent violent insurrections,” she had no opinion on whether or not the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were indeed an “insurrection.”
She announced her lack of an opinion, rejected the Trump team’s motion to recuse herself, and proceeded to introduce the case to decide the former president’s fate on the ballot.
Wallace is one of many partisan judges who have been willing to overlook their biases and conflicts of interest for the opportunity to serve Democrats’ political imperative of securing the 2024 election.
Legal scholars and judges in previous trials have routinely scoffed at the notion that Trump’s name might be kept off the ballot using the 14th Amendment since he has not been found guilty—nor even criminally accused—of inciting an insurrection.
Democrats, with the help of a handful of NeverTrump Republicans, attempted to impeach the former president for such a claim in the immediate aftermath but failed to reach the necessary two-thirds majority that would be required under the U.S. Constitution for a guilty verdict.
He is currently leading the GOP primary polls by a large margin and is outperforming current President Joe Biden in many of the general election polls.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
