Judge allows ‘one-of-a-kind’ lawsuit against Donald Trump over Jan. 6 riot to proceedWASHINGTON — East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell can pursue his lawsuit to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a judge held in a scathing ruling delivered Friday.
The potentially landmark decision, which the Trump team will all but certainly attempt to appeal to higher courts, would pave the way for an unprecedented civil trial of a former president for actions he took while in office. That could mean court-ordered inspection of Trump’s communications and actions leading up to, during and after the riot, and potentially a deposition of Trump under oath.
While some of Swalwell’s claims were rejected and the judge released other individuals from the lawsuit, including Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, D.C. District Judge Amit Mehta issued a 112-page ruling declaring that Trump was not covered by presidential immunity or free speech protections enough to dismiss the lawsuit.
Swalwell said in a statement late Friday, “Judge Mehta’s ruling is a complete vindication of my claims against Donald Trump for inciting an attack against the Capitol. Trump led a conspiracy to violently interfere with the January 6 Joint Session of Congress. With this ruling, I will move forward to depose Donald Trump and seek all relevant evidence surrounding January 6.”
Mehta acknowledged the significance of his decision.
“To deny a President immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Mehta wrote. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with the purposes behind such immunity.”
Calling it a “one-of-a-kind case,” Mehta dissected Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 and detailed how the president’s actions and words could be seen as inciting the crowd gathered near the Capitol to commit violence and as a conspiracy to disrupt lawmakers’ certification of the 2020 election results by force and intimidation.
“Only in the most extraordinary circumstances could a court not recognize that the First Amendment protects a President’s speech,” Mehta wrote. “But the court believes this is that case. Even Presidents cannot avoid liability for speech that falls outside the expansive reach of the First Amendment. The court finds that in this one-of-a-kind case the First Amendment does not shield the President from liability.”
“This is a big moment in the effort to hold former President Trump accountable for the events of Jan. 6,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “Even though we have robust protection for political speech in our country, and even though presidents have significant protection for what they say and do in office, here we have a judge concluding that Trump’s speech could be viewed as ‘incitement to imminent lawless action.’”
If upheld, the ruling means that Swalwell’s suit, along with similar cases brought by a group of other primarily Black Democratic lawmakers, including Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee, and by Capitol Police officers, can proceed into a phase that would open up new investigative powers and potentially culminate in a trial. The lawsuits against the right-wing groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys will also proceed.
Swalwell and Lee, both in Europe on a congressional trip, were not immediately available to comment.
The crux of the lawsuit is a relatively novel use of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act that bars political intimidation and has never been applied in such a way. Swalwell and the other lawsuits also cite some D.C. laws and common law on assault, and the judge allowed arguments based on a few of those to proceed, as well.
Mehta did throw out some of Swalwell’s specific arguments, including one alleging Trump inflicted extreme emotional distress upon him, but the bulk of the lawsuit remains viable.
Mehta also indicated he would release Rep. Mo Brooks from the lawsuit if the Alabama Republican filed a motion to dismiss. Brooks had put forward a different legal argument that he was acting within his official capacity, which the judge sidestepped. He said he would dismiss the case against Brooks for the same reason he did so with Giuliani and Trump Jr. — that Swalwell and the others failed to argue plausibly enough that the three of them engaged in incitement and/or a conspiracy with the crowd to violently storm the Capitol.
But regarding the former president, Mehta laid out in excruciating detail how Trump plausibly knew he could invite violence with his words, and how his actions during and after the riot, including his tweets that day, seemed to ratify and endorse what was happening. He dismissed Trump’s arguments that he was merely making political statements.
“For months, the President led his supporters to believe the election was stolen,” Mehta wrote. “When some of his supporters threatened state election officials, he refused to condemn them. Rallies in Washington, D.C., in November and December 2020 had turned violent, yet he invited his supporters to Washington, D.C., on the day of the Certification. They came by the thousands. And, following a 75-minute speech in which he blamed corrupt and weak politicians for the election loss, he called on them to march on the very place where Certification was taking place.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Judge-allows-one-of-a-kind-lawsuit-against-16930732.php
