Former President Donald Trump can be sued for damages incurred during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, “the first-ever presidential transfer of power marred by violence,” a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday.
In a written opinion that ran over 100 pages, Judge Amit Mehta rejected the former president’s claims that he is entitled to broad immunity from multiple lawsuits blaming him for the riot. Mehta reasoned that some of Trump’s actions on January 6 were “plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment” or by presidential immunity.
Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, two members of the Capitol Police, and a group of House Democrats, led by Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, have each accused the former president of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 in three separate lawsuits. The suit filed by Swalwell also named Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, Donald Trump Jr., and GOP Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama. The suit filed by 11 House Democrats alleges Trump, Giuliani and two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, conspired to incite a crowd of his supporters to breach the Capitol in order to stop Congress from counting states’ electoral votes and reaffirming President Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Taken together, the lawsuits were filed under a provision of a Reconstruction-era statute known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which holds that it is illegal for a group to conspire to prevent federal government officials from carrying out their lawful duties.
