Accusing former US president Donald Trump of inciting the Capitol riots, a Democratic lawmaker is seeking to sue the Republican strongman under charges of "conspiring with his lawyer and extremist groups to try to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden". The suit was filed in federal court in Washington under a 19th century law called the Ku Klux Klan Act. The Act, as reported by News&Observer, was signed in 1871 by then US President Ulysses S. Grant, designed to eliminate violence against Black Americans and to protect the rights of those recently freed from slavery, by allowing the president to “use the armed forces to combat those who conspired to deny equal protection of the laws”.
The impeachment acquittal aside, the next step for the former president could be the courts. Now a private citizen, Trump is stripped of his protection from legal liability that the presidency gave him. The Capitol Hill riots aside, he also faces legal exposure in Georgia over an alleged pressure campaign on state election officials, and in Manhattan over hush-money payments and business deals.
The lawsuit from Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is part of an expected wave of litigation over the January 6 riots and is believed to be the first filed by a member of Congress. The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. It also names as defendants Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, organisations that have had members charged by the Justice Department with taking part in the siege.
Trump advisor Jason Miller said in a statement that Trump did not organise the rally that preceded the riot and did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on January 6.
The suit traces the drawn-out effort by Trump and Giuliani to cast doubt on the election results even though courts across the country and state election officials repeatedly rejected their baseless allegations of fraud. Despite evidence to the contrary, the suit says, the men portrayed the election as stolen while Trump "endorsed rather than discouraged" threats of violence from his angry supporters in the weeks leading up to the assault on the Capitol.
The legal issue is whether Trump or any of the speakers at the rally near the White House that preceded the assault on the Capitol incited violence and whether they knew their words would have that effect. A phone call between Trump and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy emerged during the impeachment trial in which McCarthy, as rioters stormed the Capitol, begged Trump to call off the mob. Trump replied: "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are." The McCarthy call is significant because it could point to Trump's intent, state of mind and knowledge of the rioters' actions.
The United States Senate had acquitted Trump on the charges of inciting the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Following four days of impeachment trial, the 100-member Senate voted to impeach Trump by 57-43 votes, 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.
The nearly weeklong impeachment trial—the first in the case of a president who has already demitted office—delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the Capitol Riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.
Seven Republican senators—Bill Cassidy, Richard Burr, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey—voted in favour of impeaching him.
-Inputs from agencies
