WASHINGTON, United States – The US state of Maine on Thursday barred former President Donald Trump from the Republican presidential primary, becoming the second state to disqualify him for his role in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

Maine’s top elections official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, said in her ruling that the events of January 6, 2021 “occurred at the behest and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing President.”

“The U.S. Constitution tolerates no attack on the foundations of our government and [Maine law] requires me to respond,” said the ruling, which came in response to challenges from a handful of Maine voters.

Maine joins Colorado, where the state Supreme Court ruled Trump unfit for the presidency in early December, a move that will surely be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The verdicts in both states invoked the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who has previously sworn to protect the country and later engages in insurrection from holding office.

“I do not come to this conclusion lightly,” wrote Bellows, a Democrat. “I recognize that no Secretary of State has ever denied a presidential candidate access to the ballot based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. However, I am also aware that no presidential candidate has ever committed an insurrection.”

Trump’s campaign quickly criticized Bellows’ decision as an “attempted election theft and disenfranchisement of the American voter” and called her a “vicious leftist and bipartisan Biden-supporting Democrat.”

“These partisan election interference efforts are a hostile attack on American democracy,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement, accusing President Joe Biden and Democrats of “relying on the power of government institutions to protect their power.”

Cheung said Trump would appeal the ruling.

Fellow Republicans supported Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also seeking the party’s nomination.

“It opens Pandora’s box. “Can a Republican secretary of state bar Biden from the vote?” he said.

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The decision in Maine comes as Trump remains the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in the 2024 vote.

The two are neck and neck in polls, and Biden has stepped up his attacks on his predecessor in recent weeks, saying that Trump “certainly supported an insurrection. No question, no, zero.”

Biden said at a recent campaign reception that “the greatest threat Trump poses is to our democracy. Because if we lose, we lose everything.”

He described Trump as “sitting there and watching on television as a mob attacked the Capitol” in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by the Republican’s supporters aimed at overturning Trump’s loss to Biden.

Trump continues to claim without evidence that he is the rightful winner of the 2020 vote.

He is scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the election results. He also faces racketeering charges in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to overturn the southern state’s election results after his defeat.

Maine and Colorado host their nominating contests on March 5 – also known as “Super Tuesday” – when voters go to the polls in more than a dozen states, including populous California and Texas.