Donald Trump (photo Shealah Craighead, White House)
The United States Department of Justice said today (Thursday) that two police officers who served in the Capitol at the time in 2021 can sue former President Donald Trump for his suspected role in the incident.
Attorneys for the Justice Department’s civil division told a federal appeals court in Washington that it should reject the claim that Trump has immunity from civil lawsuits based on his public remarks at the event.
“Communication of the President of the United States with the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote. “But this traditional function is one of public communication. This does not include incitement to immediate violence of the type that the district court determined in the plaintiffs’ complaints that there is a likelihood of its existence.”
A U.S. District Court judge ruled in February 2022 against Trump’s efforts to dismiss civil lawsuits by both police officers and members of Congress. The judge wrote that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, in which he urged a crowd of supporters to “fight like hell” and then targeted them Towards the Capitol, he could see “a call to collective action.”
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Trump appealed the decision and at a later appeal hearing in December 2022, the judges ruled that Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity should be rejected when it is “a matter of public concern.”
But they emphasized that it is not possible to definitively determine whether his speech directly caused the riots.
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