Presidential immunity will not protect the former leader from lawsuits over the January 6, 2021 riot.
Former US President Donald Trump is not immune from being sued over his alleged role in instigating the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, an appeals court in Washington DC ruled on Friday. Democrats and Capitol Police officers took legal action against Trump in the wake of the protest.
In a unanimous verdict, the court rejected Trump’s argument that “presidential immunity” forbids him from being held liable for the events of that day, which took place while he was still in power. In a speech to his supporters before the riot, Trump told them to “fight like hell” against his election loss, but to do so “peacefully and patriotically.”
In the ruling, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote that the president “does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities,” and “when he acts in an unofficial, private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen.”
A trio of lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and US Capitol Police officers allege that Trump’s ‘fight like hell’ speech encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, and should pay damages. Two officers injured during the riot are seeking a minimum of $75,000 from the former president.
Four people died during the protest, all of them Trump supporters. One woman, an Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer during a scuffle near the entrance to the House chamber.
The court’s decision paves the way for these lawsuits to go ahead, and could also influence the outcome of a criminal case brought against the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith. In August, Smith charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, making the same argument that Trump’s speech provoked the storming of the Capitol.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that speeches on “election integrity” are “at the heart of his official responsibilities as president,” and are therefore protected from legal consequences. Trump himself has dismissed Smith’s case as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Trump is currently the frontrunner to take the Republican Party’s nomination for next year’s election. However, the former president faces multiple legal obstacles. Smith is overseeing two criminal cases against Trump, the second concerning his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
In addition to the three civil suits concerning the Capitol riot, Trump is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly inflating the worth of his business empire, and faces charges in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. Finally, Trump is being tried in New York for his alleged misreporting of “hush-money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump insists that all of the cases against him are part of the same overarching, Democrat-led plot to sideline Biden’s leading opponent ahead of the 2024 election.
The Deep State sure are terrified of President Trump.
Are they going to sue him for telling people to “peacefully make your voices heard”? Because democrats told people way worse during the BLM “summer of love” in 2020. They incited much more violence, wanton property damage and death over those few months than Orange Man ever has. In normal times people would caution them against setting a precedent here, but then again these aren’t normal times and laws don’t ever apply to the left.
This is just another blatant and obvious attempt to bleed this man dry financially, that’s all.
Yep, litigation is a “Deep state” tool.
The “simple mindedness” of it all: Prosecuting one man when half the country feels the same way. They gonna prosecute 100 million Americans next?
Trump is the most litigious person on earth. Must be deep state. And he’s a sex offender, tax cheat, fraudster insurrectionist. I can see why you love him.
yes, he is all that indeed.
But don t you see that it is not about that, that people are angry ? And that he gets support ?
Don’t bother feeding the troll. He’s well aware Trump is none of those things (in spite of how much the lefties want it to be true). He’s just impotently trying to rile you up.
As if NONE of the establishment globalist politicians he supports are sex offenders, tax cheats, fraudsters or election riggers, lol 😄
I adore Donald Trump with such indescribable passion my involuntary feelings of adoration stir something of a sexual perversion deep inside me. DT will always be my hero, man of integrity, man of the truth & my President! https://www.facebook.com/john.henry.14473
John