The United States Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office asked an appeals court this Thursday to dismiss Donald Trump’s thesis that he acted under immunity and in the exercise of his duties when on January 6, 2021, while he was still acting president after losing the election to Joe Biden, he addressed thousands of supporters and urged them to “fight like crazy” to prevent the ratification of the electoral result. Trump urged those attending his rally to march on the Capitol, and soon after thousands of them stormed the House of Congress.
For the US Public Ministry, Trump’s legal arguments against the lawsuits against him for 6-E are always based “on a single categorical argument”, and that is that “a president is always immune when he offers a speech about matters of public interest…, even if that speech also constitutes an incitement to imminent private violence.” And “The United States -continues the Prosecutor’s Office- respectfully affirms that the Court must reject this categorical argument”.
Prosecutors filed this brief with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (Washington D.C.), which is prosecuting the former president’s appeal against a previous ruling by District Judge Amit Mehta on his alleged immunity. The magistrate denied it, determining that his fierce public intervention on January 6 was not within the scope of his official duties.
Judge Mehta’s ruling allowed numerous civil lawsuits filed by congressional parliamentarians and police officers who acted against the insurgents in the assault on the Capitol to go ahead. Trump appealed and the appeals court requested an opinion from the Prosecutor’s Office, which has now just given it.
In its letter, the department headed by Merrick Garland affirms that it does not directly pronounce itself on whether Trump’s speech encouraged the riots in the Capitol, but in fact it does so implicitly by stressing that “incitement to imminent violence” does not enter in the official duties of a president and therefore cannot be considered immune.
