Capitol

WASHINGTON — President Trump is not immune from civil claims that he incited a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a federal judge has ruled in one of the last unresolved legal cases stemming from the riot.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Tuesday that Trump’s remarks at his “Stop the Steal” rally, held on the Ellipse near the White House shortly before the siege began, “plausibly” were inciting words that are not protected by the 1st Amendment right to free speech.

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.

“President Trump has not shown that the Speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties,” Mehta wrote. “The content of the Ellipse Speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity.”

Not the first court ruling on presidential immunity

The decision is not the court’s 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.

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’s words during his rally speech plausibly amounted to incitement and were not protected by the 1st Amendment.

The case returned to Mehta after an appeals court ruling upheld his 2022 decision. He said Tuesday’s ruling on immunity falls under a more “rigorous” legal standard at this later stage in the litigation.

Mehta, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, said his latest decision is not a “final pronouncement on immunity for any particular act.”

“President 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,” the judge wrote.

Official capacity vs. office-seeker

Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the rally before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump. Trump closed out his speech by saying, “We fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump’s lawyers argued that Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 meets the threshold for presidential immunity.

The plaintiffs 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.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who at that time led the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, Trump’s 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’ claims.

‘Victory for the rule of law’

The civil claims survived Trump’s 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.

The plaintiffs’ legal team includes attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Damon Hewitt, the group’s president and executive director, praised the ruling as a “monumental victory for the rule of law, affirming that no one, including the president of the United States, is above it.”

“The court rightly recognizes that President Trump’s actions leading to the January 6 insurrection fell outside the scope of presidential duties,” Hewitt said in a statement. “This ruling is an important step toward accountability for the violent attack on the Capitol and our democracy.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol also should apply to a man charged with planting pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, the suspect’s attorneys argue in a bid to get his case dismissed.

In a court filing Monday, defense attorneys assert that Trump’s blanket pardons extend to the charges against Brian J. Cole Jr. because his alleged conduct on Jan. 5, 2021, is “inextricably tethered” to what happened at the Capitol the next day. They’re asking U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to throw out the case before trial.

Justice Department prosecutors didn’t immediately respond in writing to the defense’s request. In a previous court filing, prosecutors said Cole, under questioning by FBI agents, denied that his actions were related to the Jan. 6 proceedings at the Capitol.

On his first day back in the White House last year, Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus people charged in the attack by a mob of his supporters.

Nearly a year later, Cole was arrested on charges that he placed two pipe bombs outside both the Republican and the Democratic national committees’ headquarters in Washington the night before the riot. The devices didn’t detonate before law enforcement officers discovered them Jan. 6.

Cole’s attorneys said the Justice Department’s framing of the case has explicitly linked Cole’s alleged conduct on Jan. 5 to the events of Jan. 6, when rioters disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.

“That is not happenstance sequencing in time. It is the government’s theory of Mr. Cole’s alleged motive and context,” defense lawyers wrote. “According to the government, the timing was chosen because of what was scheduled to occur at the Capitol on January 6.”

They also argued that prosecutors’ theory of a possible motive places Cole’s alleged conduct “in the same political controversy that animated the January 6 crowd.”

In court filings, prosecutors have said that Cole confessed to investigators after his Dec. 4 arrest. He told FBI agents that he felt “bewildered” by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election and “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse,” prosecutors said.

Cole has remained jailed since his arrest. His attorneys have appealed Ali’s refusal to order Cole’s pretrial release from custody. The judge hasn’t set a trial date yet.

Cole, 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for more than four years.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on Jan. 6, 2021, and the officers who fought and were injured defending it that day.

Steps from the Capitol’s West Front, where the worst of the violence occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because the Senate voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had delayed putting it up. Many Republicans had balked at installing the plaque.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the plaque says. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. Saturday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) led the effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack and insurrection and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. “We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,” he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Trump’s supporters before eventually pushing them out of the building.

The mob of rioters who violently pushed past police and broke in were echoing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden’s victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running for safety and vandalized the building before police regained control.

Five police officers and four protesters died as a consequence of the violence. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured.

The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. The president, who has called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” on his first day of his new term granted pardons or commutations to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in the rioting.

Trump was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the insurrection. The Senate did not convict him, and the felony charges were dropped after he was reelected in November 2024.

Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up.

After more than a year of silence — and a lawsuit by two of the officers who fought at the Capitol that day — Johnson said at the beginning of the year that there were technical problems with the statute and the plaque could not be erected.

Tillis went to the Senate floor shortly afterward and passed a resolution, with no objections, to place the plaque on the Senate side.

One of the officers who sued, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, said the lawsuit would continue. Hodges, who was crushed by the rioters in the heavy doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said Saturday that the overnight installation was a “fine stopgap” but that it was not in full compliance of the law. The original statute said that all of the officers’ names should be listed, among other technical specifications.

“The weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering,” Hodges said. “Our lawsuit persists.”

Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Allison Robbert contributed to this report.