WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The House Homeland Security chairman accused Donald Trump in a federal lawsuit Tuesday of inciting\u00a0the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol\u00a0and conspiring with his lawyer and extremist groups to try to prevent Congress from certifying the results of\u00a0the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit from Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is part of an expected wave of litigation over the Jan. 6 riot and is believed to be the first filed by a member of Congress. It seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. It also names as defendants Rudy Giuliani, Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, extremist organizations that have had members charged by the Justice Department with taking part in the siege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll I wanted to do was do my job, and the insurrection that occurred prevented me from doing that,\u201d Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters Tuesday as he recounted his harrowing experiences as Trump loyalists broke into the Capitol and disrupted the constitutionally mandated process of certifying the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Trump adviser, Jason Miller, said in a statement that Trump did not organize the rally that preceded the riot and \u201cdid not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6th.\u201d A lawyer for Giuliani did not immediately return an email seeking comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The suit, filed in federal court in Washington under a Reconstruction-era law called the Ku Klux Klan Act, comes three days after Trump was\u00a0acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial\u00a0that centered on allegations that he incited the riot, in which five people died. That acquittal is likely to open the door to fresh legal scrutiny over Trump\u2019s actions before and during the siege. Additional suits could be brought by other members of Congress or by law enforcement officers injured while responding to the riot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even some Republicans who voted to acquit Trump on Saturday acknowledged that the more proper venue to deal with Trump was in the courts, especially now that he has left the White House and lost certain legal protections that shielded him as president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The suit traces the drawn-out effort by Trump and Giuliani to cast doubt on the election results even though\u00a0courts across the country\u00a0and state election officials repeatedly rejected their\u00a0baseless allegations of fraud. Despite evidence to the contrary, the suit says, the men portrayed the election as stolen while Trump \u201cendorsed rather than discouraged\u201d threats of violence from his angry supporters in the weeks leading up to the assault on the Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence,\u201d the suit says. \u201cIt was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Presidents are historically afforded broad immunity from lawsuits for actions they take in their role as commander in chief. But the lawsuit filed Tuesday was brought against Trump in his personal, not official, capacity and alleges that none of the behavior at issue had to do with his responsibilities as president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInciting a riot, or attempting to interfere with the congressional efforts to ratify the results of the election that are commended by the Constitution, could not conceivably be within the scope of ordinary responsibilities of the president,\u201d Joseph Sellers, a lawyer who represents Thompson, said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn this respect, because of his conduct, he is just like any other private citizen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sellers, a lawyer with the Washington law firm of Cohen Milstein, filed the case along with the NAACP. Several other members of Congress are expected to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that Biden supports the rights of individuals \u201cto take steps through the judicial process,\u201d but she declined to comment further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the impeachment case focused squarely on accusations of incitement, the lawsuit more broadly accuses Trump of conspiring to disrupt the constitutional activities of Congress \u2014 namely,\u00a0the certification of election results\u00a0establishing Biden as the rightful winner \u2014 through a monthslong effort to discredit the outcome and to lean on individual states and his own vice president to overturn the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case against Trump was brought under a provision of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was passed in response to KKK violence and prohibits violence or intimidation meant to prevent Congress or other federal officials from carrying out their constitutional duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFortunately, this hasn\u2019t been used very much,\u201d Sellers said. \u201cBut what we see here is so unprecedented that it\u2019s really reminiscent of what gave rise to the enactment of this legislation right after the Civil War.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The suit cites incendiary comments that Trump and Giuliani made in the weeks leading up to the riot and on the day of it that lawyers say were designed to mobilize supporters to work to overturn the election results and to prevent the congressional certification process. That process was temporarily interrupted when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump told supporters at a rally preceding the riot to \u201c\u00a0fight like hell,\u201d but lawyers for the former president adamantly denied during the impeachment trial that he had incited the riot. They pointed to a remark during his speech in which he told the crowd to behave \u201cpeacefully\u201d that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense lawyers are likely to revisit those assertions in the lawsuit. They may also argue, as was done during the impeachment case, that\u00a0Trump\u2019s speech\u00a0was protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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