Former attorney general Bill Barr said efforts to disqualify former president Donald Trump from the ballot in several states are “counterproductive.” 

“Regardless of what I think of Trump and the fact that I oppose his renomination, I think he has to be beaten at the ballot box,” Barr said during an appearance on Fox News on Saturday. “And these heavy-handed efforts to disenfranchise his supporters, I think are counterproductive. If anything, they make him stronger.”

Both Colorado and Maine have disqualified Trump from their respective primary ballots because his actions in the wake of the 2020 election allegedly violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which forbids individuals who have “engaged in insurrection” from seeking federal office.

Trump’s appearance on the ballot is facing lawsuits in at least 13 states, including Texas, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

“We can’t have all the states making their own rules as to what an insurrection is and how much evidence is needed to … make a determination that someone is engaged in an insurrection,” Barr said.

The former attorney general said it is up to Congress to define how the 14th Amendment should be enforced.

Barr’s comments came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot. Barr suggested the justices will “smack it down very quickly.”

The Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on February 8.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota supreme court dismissed one such case in November, holding that there “is no state statute that prohibits a major political party from placing on the presidential nomination ballot, or sending delegates to the national convention supporting, a candidate who is ineligible for office.” But the court’s ruling said that the body would not ban a challenge to Trump’s eligibility from appearing on the state’s general-election ballot.