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A federal judge ruled Friday that Democratic lawmakers and Capitol Police officers can move forward with civil lawsuits against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued a 112-page opinion on early motions from defendants to dismiss claims in three related lawsuits, which seek to hold Trump, the former president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, and others personally responsible for their roles in the events.
Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson sued Trump, Giuliani and others; California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell sued Trump and Brooks; and two Capitol Police officers sued Trump.
A total of 11 House members are plaintiffs in the lawsuits under the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed in 1871 in the wake of the Civil War, which bans any conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging the duties of their office.
Mehta allowed some claims to go ahead against Trump and two right-wing extremist groups, but dismissed other claims against Trump. The judge also said he would dismiss the claim against Brooks, Rudy Giuliani, and Donand Trump, Jr., finding that at the rally, “none of their words, explicitly or implicitly, rose to the level of a call for imminent use of violence or lawless action.”
The judge rejected Trump’s argument he had the absolute right under the First Amendment to make the comments alleged to be an incitement to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States.
“Having considered the President’s January 6 Rally Speech in its entirety and in context, the court concludes that the President’s statements that, ‘[W]e fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ and ‘[W]e’re going to try to and give [weak Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,’ immediately before exhorting rally-goers to ‘walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,’ are plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment,” Judge Mehta wrote in the ruling. “It is plausible that those words were implicitly ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and [were] likely to produce such action.’”
“If the President’s larger point is that a speaker only in the rarest of circumstances should be held liable for political speech, the court agrees,” Mehta wrote. “That is why the court determines, as discussed below, that Giuliani’s and Trump Jr.’s words are protected speech. But what is lacking in their words is present in the President’s: an implicit call for imminent violence or lawlessness. He called for thousands ‘to fight like hell’ immediately before directing an unpermitted march to the Capitol, where the targets of their ire were at work, knowing that militia groups and others among the crowd were prone to violence.”
U.S. Capitol Police Officer James Blassingame, the lead plaintiff in the third case, described his legal victory as evidence that the powerful can be held accountable.
“It’s good to see that no one is above the law,” Blassingame said. “Everyone should be held accountable for their actions. Hopefully, a jury will see all of the evidence and make the appropriate determination.”
