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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.

The movie is called “Heel” and its frenetic opening — a flash-cut glimpse of young, handsome, swaggeringly cruel Tommy (Anson Boon) in drug-fueled party mode — seems enough to explain the title. The next time we see him, though, he’s neck-shackled in the basement of a remote English estate. What follows in Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa’s blackly comic, unnerving thriller is clearly meant to evoke “Heel’s” more obedience-minded reading.

And who would be harshing this hooligan’s buzz with a case of reform-minded abduction? An eerily isolated, rules-driven nuclear family: mild-mannered, soft-spoken Chris (Stephen Graham), haunted Catherine (Andrea Riseborough) and polite son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). They all may as well have sprung from the combined neo-gothic conjurings of Edward Gorey and Harold Pinter. Under Komasa’s direction, the mix of fractured fable and terroristic morality play in Bartek Bartosik’s screenplay is absurd but potent, giving “Heel” enough psychologically twisted juju to nearly always feel like more than the sum of its parts.

Our first glimpse of Tommy chained up, pleading to be let go, is through the eyes of a young Macedonian refugee, Katrina (Monika Frajczyk), being given a tour of the large countryside manor where she’s just been hired by Chris for twice-a-week housework. Katrina, like us, is rightly horrified but she’s in her own bind: undocumented, saved by Chris from the streets, with her signature on a confidentiality agreement and a deportation threat hanging over her. She’s hardly in a position to do much more than accept what’s going on as a grimmer version of her own dead-end predicament.

And yet what’s readily apparent is that this weird, fragile, insular family is genuinely keen on folding Tommy into their lives. They’re also convinced of their unorthodox methods, which hinge on reinforcement and reward. Tommy seems receptive, too, with each invitation to participate in his abductors’ togetherness (meals, movie nights, a picnic). This is when “Heel” is at its most alluringly queasy, a dark commentary on all families as institutions inherently built on confinement and emotional blackmail. (It’s no coincidence one of the movie’s executive producers is Jerzy Skolimowski, who made his own pointed kidnapping allegory with “Moonlighting.”)

Everyone’s broken, so the collective strength of the cast in keeping us on our toes about where this is all headed is a huge plus. The wiry Boon doles out his brash character’s reserves of vulnerability to stunning effect — Tommy is a difficult part and Boon knows how to make it revealing and suspenseful. Graham’s tweaked, sensitive patriarch is tantalizingly far from the heartbreaking dad of “Adolescence” and the gloriously oddball Riseborough makes the most of her faint-voiced mom’s severity. Frajczyk and Rakusen are also pitch-perfect.

Last year Komasa had another family-centered thriller with “Anniversary,” a movie about politics corrupting a happy home. But we know that equation already. “Heel” is Tolstoy’s happy-family maxim cooked in a mad scientist’s lab. While it sometimes shows its seams as an idea movie, its elegant disturbia has a boldness, recalling that great mind-game ’60s era that gave us “TheServant,” “The Collector,” and the early psychological freak-outs of Komasa’s countryman, Roman Polanski.

Fans of Emmerdale and Coronation Street were not impressed to hear yet again the soaps had been cancelled by ITV in favour of sports coverage, leading to a plea to bosses

Fans of the soaps have once again been dealt a blow, as there’s no Emmerdale or Coronation Street on Friday on ITVX or ITV1.

The soaps have once again been shelved by ITV in favour of sports coverage. It’s sparked fury amongst soap fans who had been promised five days a week of the soaps from January.

Not only that, but most weeks the ‘missing episodes’ never end up being replaced, leaving fans annoyed. This time, it’s the rugby coverage again, while soon it will no doubt be more football that takes the shows off air.

Time and time again viewers have pleaded with bosses to make a change so that fans do not miss out. A suggestion was that the episodes could still drop on ITVX, or sports could be moved elsewhere given ITV as a number of channels.

READ MORE: EastEnders air ‘heartbreaking’ Nigel scenes as character leaves Walford for goodREAD MORE: Coronation Street airs shock twist as Jodie’s downfall ‘sealed’ amid evil scheme

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Taking to social media, fans called out the move once more annoyed that another Friday would see both soaps dropped in favour of sports. A fan said: “What again !! This is happening way too often.”

Another agreed: “Why can’t rugby go on ITV3?” as a third said: “Exactly! Or they could at least still put the Corrie episode on ITVX.” Another fan said: “This really annoys me when this happens.”

A fan then asked: “When will the missing episodes of Corrie and Emmerdale due to sport on Friday be shown?” The answer is never, as the filming of the episodes would have been planned around the ‘cancellations’, while in future there will no doubt be episodes airing on different days.

It’s happened quite often since January, with fans having fumed about it before this week too. A fan said: “Why can’t the footy and rugby be put on another channel, we always miss out , so unfair!!!”

A fan added: “Never mind the loyal supporters of soaps so just take them off for sport.” Another fan commented: “They’re at it again taking Corrie off two nights this week and not making the time up Why oh why do they that? ITV has four channels plus ITVX so why not put football on one of their other channels and leave Corrie alone?” Other fans disagreed with the comments, suggesting it wasn’t a big deal, but soap fans would beg to differ!

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .