The hearing about Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s 2024 primary ballot concluded on Friday with testimony from a high-ranking staff member of the committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and a legal scholar who believed the disqualification question is too difficult for a judge to decide.

Trump called as a witness Robert J. Delahunty, a retired law professor whose testimony cast doubt on Trump’s disqualification for office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The post-Civil War provision bars members of Congress or “an officer of the United States” from occupying state or federal office if they took an oath to the U.S. Constitution but subsequently “engaged in insurrection.”

Denver District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace, who is responsible for determining if Colorado election law and the 14th Amendment require Colorado’s secretary of state to exclude Trump from the ballot, questioned Delahunty about his view that Congress has neither authorized nor given guidance to the courts about Section 3 disqualifications.

“Do you have examples of situations in which a court has basically said, ‘The Constitution’s too hard for me to interpret. Therefore, I’m gonna let Congress tell me what it means?'” she asked. “In general, I think that’s exactly the job of the court – to interpret the Constitution. I’d love to hear from you about why you think in this instance, I should say, ‘It’s too hard. Congress, tell me what it means.'”

“No, I don’t have case law,” responded Delahunty, who did not hold himself out as an expert on Section 3.

Since Monday, lawyers for four Republican and two unaffiliated voters seeking to exclude Trump from next year’s ballot have presented evidence suggesting Trump’s actions to overturn the 2020 election results, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, constituted his engagement in an insurrection.

Trump called Delahunty as a witness largely to rebut testimony from Gerard Magliocca, a 14th Amendment expert who believed the president was not only an “officer of the United States” in the historical understanding of the phrase, but that an insurrection need only involve resisting the execution of the law.

Delahunty was concerned that definition was too imprecise.

“If you have a crowd disrupting the Senate’s vote on a presidential nomination, that would seem to be an interference with the execution of the Constitution,” he said.

Delahunty did not take the stand as an expert on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and the petitioners’ attorneys pointed out Delahunty’s recent work included articles for conservative outlets referencing Hunter Biden’s laptop and the “deep state,” and “cancel culture.” Delahunty previously authored an article arguing the vice president can, in certain circumstances, reject the presidential electors that states send to Congress – an issue undergirding the mob attack on the Capitol.

More importantly for the petitioners’ case, Delahunty suggested – before Trump hired him as an expert – that the president is an “officer of the United States” under Section 3. Delahunty attempted to distance himself from that comment on the witness stand.

“I don’t take a position on whether the presidency is covered or not,” he said.

“You know the Constitution repeatedly refers to the office of the presidency?” asked attorney Jason Murray for the petitioners. “Presidents Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Lincoln, Grant and Garfield were all also referred to as the chief executive officer of the United States.”

Further, Murray continued, Trump himself argued he was an “officer of the United States” in a court filing this year in New York, as part of his criminal prosecution for an allegedly illegal hush money payment to an adult film star. Delahunty acknowledged he was not aware of Trump’s admission.

Wallace also probed Delahunty’s related argument that Congress needed to pass legislation if it wanted to give courts the authority to disqualify federal candidates in the way the petitioners were asking her to do for Trump.

“If the only way to enforce a constitutional provision such as this is through legislation, then essentially isn’t it leaving it to Congress to decide whether or not the prohibition exists at all?” she wondered.

Trump’s attorneys also rigorously cross-examined a witness called by the petitioners: Timothy Heaphy, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia under the Obama administration and, more recently, the chief investigative counsel for the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The investigation ultimately found Trump bore responsibility for the violence.

Scott Gessler, a Republican former secretary of state who now represents Trump, asked whether the seven Democratic and two Republican committee members went into the Jan. 6 hearings with “an open mind.”

“The fact that President Trump instigated the attack on Jan. 6 was obvious just from his words,” Heaphy responded. “Just because certain facts are obvious at the beginning of the investigation doesn’t mean an investigation has reached a conclusion or is closed-minded.”

Gessler displayed several tweets and press releases from committee members blaming Trump for an insurrection either immediately after the attack or during the subsequent impeachment proceedings. For example, chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., tweeted that Trump “threatened our entire democracy by instigating this attack.” Vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Trump “summoned this mob, assembled this mob, and lit the flame” of the “insurrection.”

“They certainly had opinions at the beginning that I would call hypotheses. … We were comparing everything we learned against those hypotheses,” testified Heaphy in response to questions about the fairness of the congressional investigation. “The hypothesis was never rebutted.”

The parties will return to Wallace’s courtroom on Nov. 15 to deliver closing arguments. She will then issue an order shortly afterward laying out the facts and her legal conclusions about Trump’s inclusion on Colorado’s ballot.

Her order is appealable to the Colorado Supreme Court, which has discretion to decline the case.

The case is Anderson et al. v. Griswold.