Former President Donald Trump can be sued for damages incurred during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, “the first-ever presidential transfer of power marred by violence,” a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday.
In a written opinion that ran over 100 pages, Judge Amit Mehta rejected the former president’s claims that he is entitled to broad immunity from multiple lawsuits blaming him for the riot. Mehta reasoned that some of Trump’s actions on January 6 were “plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment” or by presidential immunity.
Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, two members of the Capitol Police, and a group of House Democrats, led by Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, have each accused the former president of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 in three separate lawsuits.