{"id":2069,"date":"2026-04-01T16:21:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/2069\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:21:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:21:27","slug":"trump-isnt-immune-from-civil-claims-his-jan-6-rally-speech-incited-riot-judge-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/2069\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump isn’t immune from civil claims his Jan. 6 rally speech incited riot, judge says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump is not immune from civil claims<\/a> that he incited a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan, 6, 2021, a federal judge has ruled<\/a> in one of the last unresolved legal cases stemming from the riot.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Tuesday that Trump\u2019s remarks at his \u201cStop the Steal\u201d rally, held on the Ellipse near the White House shortly before the siege began, \u201cplausibly\u201d were inciting words that are not protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.<\/p>\n

The Republican president is not shielded from liability for much of his Jan. 6 conduct, including that speech and many of his social media posts that day, according to the judge. But Mehta said Trump cannot be held liable for his official acts that day, including his Rose Garden remarks during the riot and his interactions with Justice Department officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump has not shown that the Speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties,\u201d Mehta wrote. \u201cThe content of the Ellipse Speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not the first court ruling on presidential immunity<\/p>\n

The decision is not the court\u2019s first ruling that Trump can be held liable for the violence at the Capitol and it is unlikely to be the last given the near-certainty of an appeal. But the 79-page ruling sets the stage for a possible civil trial in the same courthouse where Trump was charged with crimes for his Jan. 6 conduct, before his 2024 election ended the prosecution.<\/p>\n

Mehta previously refused to dismiss the claims against Trump in a February 2022 ruling that Trump was not entitled to presidential immunity from the claims brought by Democratic members of Congress and law enforcement officers who guarded the Capitol on Jan. 6. In that decision, Mehta also concluded that Trump\u2019s words during his rally speech plausibly amounted to incitement and were not protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

The case returned to Mehta after an appeals court ruling upheld his 2022 decision. He said Tuesday\u2019s ruling on immunity falls under a more \u201crigorous\u201d legal standard at this later stage in the litigation.<\/p>\n

Mehta, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, said his latest decision is not a \u201cfinal pronouncement on immunity for any particular act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump remains free to reassert official-acts immunity as a defense at trial. But the burden will remain his and will be subject to a higher standard of proof,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

Official capacity vs. office-seeker<\/p>\n

Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the rally before the mob\u2019s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 electoral victory over Trump. Trump closed out his speech by saying, \u201cWe fight. We fight like hell and if you don\u2019t fight like hell, you\u2019re not going to have a country anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers argued<\/a> that Trump\u2019s conduct on Jan. 6 meets the threshold for presidential immunity. <\/p>\n

The plaintiffs<\/a> contended that Trump cannot prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. They also said the Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity.<\/p>\n

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who at that time led the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, Trump\u2019s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation, which was consolidated with the officers\u2019 claims.<\/p>\n

\u2018Victory for the rule of law\u2019<\/p>\n

The civil claims survived Trump\u2019s sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. More than 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u2019 legal team includes attorneys from the Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Damon Hewitt, the group\u2019s president and executive director, praised the ruling as a \u201cmonumental victory for the rule of law, affirming that no one, including the president of the United States, is above it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe court rightly recognizes that President Trump\u2019s actions leading to the January 6 insurrection fell outside the scope of presidential duties,\u201d Hewitt said in a statement. \u201cThis ruling is an important step toward accountability for the violent attack on the Capitol and our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump is not immune from civil claims that he incited a mob of his supporters to attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2738,2737,2735,2742,1296,2744,2121,2734,2741,2736,2743,10,65,11,64,2740,2739,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-2069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-trump","8":"tag-79-page-ruling","9":"tag-capitol","10":"tag-civil-claim","11":"tag-conduct","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-decision","14":"tag-free-speech","15":"tag-jan","16":"tag-judge","17":"tag-mehta","18":"tag-official-act-immunity","19":"tag-potus","20":"tag-president-donald-trump","21":"tag-president-of-the-united-states","22":"tag-president-trump","23":"tag-rally-speech","24":"tag-riot","25":"tag-trump"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116330370432516746","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}