Left: Jan. 6 rioters during the 2021 Capitol attack (Department of Justice). Right: President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak at a meeting of the House GOP conference, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Lawyers for Donald Trump spent the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol fighting on behalf of the president-elect in court over the status of the lawsuits that he’s currently facing for his actions that day — arguing that Trump should be exempt from all of them because of the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer granting him broad criminal immunity from official acts.
Trump and others are accused of conspiring to incite an assembled crowd to “march upon and enter” the Capitol building during the 2021 insurrection with his statements and actions. Capitol Police officers and members of Congress filed a series of lawsuits against Trump that February after the attack, alleging that he was liable for what transpired and should dole out compensatory damages to them.
Trump attorney Jonathan Shaw told U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Monday during a virtual hearing that the Supreme Court’s July 2024 decision provides “further insight” into the legal standard for tossing out the civil suits on the grounds that they directly involve official acts that Trump took as president, according to Politico. In order for Trump to get the suits axed, his legal team will have to prove that he was acting in his official capacity as president while speaking to Jan. 6 rioters that day — specifically, at a rally on the Ellipse lawn outside the White House, where Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress certified the results of the 2020 election.
“We have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls,” Trump said at the rally. “Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people. … And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
On Monday, Mehta floated the idea of an evidentiary hearing being held to determine whether Trump qualifies for civil immunity. Shaw told the Barack Obama appointee that such a hearing likely wouldn’t be required on account of the legal standard being broad enough to warrant an automatic dismissal.
“We win unless it is absolutely clear that these are not official acts,” Shaw said. “Unless all of the subsidiary facts are subject to dispute … we don’t need that trial.”
Civil rights attorney Joseph Sellers, who is representing the plaintiffs, says the ball is in Trump’s court in terms of proving whether his statements and actions were official acts, not the plaintiffs.
“None of these decisions have changed the fact that the burden is on President Trump to demonstrate his way to immunity,” Sellers said, according to Politico.
Mehta agreed, telling Shaw: “It’s your burden. … I’m not sure it’s my ultimate job.”
Court records viewed by Law&Crime show that Trump’s legal team has until Friday to file a motion for summary judgment to confirm the availability of civil immunity. The plaintiffs’ opposition to Trump’s motion and any possible cross-motion to challenge Trump’s immunity claim must be filed by the end of February.
The lawsuits Trump is facing all cite the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal law barring mob violence directed at federal officials. They stem from a complaint filed by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. — the former chairman of the now-defunct House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol — as well as lead plaintiff Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. and seven Capitol Police officers including Conrad Smith, Bobby Tabron, Briana Kirkland, and James Blassingame.
The suits claim Trump conjured up the false narrative that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him. Trump has denied any and all wrongdoing, insisting that he encouraged his supporters to engage in peaceful protest.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said at the Ellipse rally.
The sentence has been propped up by the future president’s legal team over the years, with him sending a letter to the Jan. 6 Select Committee in October 2022 with the title “PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY” in all caps.
“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt,” the letter said. “Despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself.”
At an event at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend — leading up to the anniversary of Jan. 6 — Trump continued to claim that the results of the 2020 election “could have been sent back” and reanalyzed, according to ABC News. He described Jan. 6 as a “day of love” while on the campaign trail last year.
“They asked me to speak,” Trump said at an October event. “I went and I spoke, and I used the term ‘peacefully and patriotically.””
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
