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Inset: President Donald Trump speaks to law enforcement officials on the street gang MS-13, Friday, July 28, 2017, in Brentwood, N.Y. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)/Background: FILE — Supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
After missing a deadline to file at the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump has formally left himself exposed to civil liability lawsuits from people who wish to hold him personally accountable for his role in the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The agreed-upon Feb. 15 deadline for Trump to file a writ of certiorari at the high court came and went without a word from Trump’s defense team last week, though a spokesman for the former president said he would continue to fight for “presidential immunity” on all fronts, NBC reported.
The civil immunity issue is different from the criminal immunity issue Trump has now escalated on appeal to the Supreme Court as he attempts to dismiss his indictment in Washington, D.C., alleging he criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump and special counsel Jack Smith are now in a holding pattern as they await to see what the justices will do next.
This new legal vulnerability for Trump opened wide as he and his attorneys were in the thick of it last week: he was ordered to pay $355 million in New York for his fraudulent business practices; his March 25 hush-money trial date in Manhattan was locked in; and in Florida, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected his latest attempt to delay a deadline for pretrial motions. A tentative trial date in the classified documents case is set for May 20.
Civil liability involving Trump and his alleged actions on Jan. 6 have been ongoing since early 2021 and came to a head late last year.
On Dec. 1, judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Trump in a case brought by Capitol Police Officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, as well as lawmakers including Reps. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and 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.
The lawsuits sought to hold Trump civilly liable for the destruction wrought on Jan. 6 and the direct impact it had on their lives. The police officers in particular sought roughly $75,000 apiece in damages. The allegations were first made formally in March 2021 and centered on the accusation that Trump’s pervasive and false claims of so-called “voter fraud” ahead of Jan. 6 culminated in the deadly breach of the U.S. Capitol. Those events have spurred emotional and physical injuries as well as suicides, the plaintiffs argued.
The appeals court ruled in their favor, finding that the propagation of Trump’s disinformation was not part of Trump’s “official duties.” The appeals court ruled similarly a second time, finding that an August 2021 lawsuit brought by U.S. Capitol Police officer Conrad Smith and several police-officer co-plaintiffs was “indistinguishable” from the earlier one. In sum, the court found Trump was acting as a candidate on the stump, not a president.
As the civil cases progress, Trump will still have the ability to argue immunity as part of his own defense.
An attorney for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime on Monday.
