Latest in Jan. 6: Civil Litigation
The department argues that presidential immunity does not protect Donald Trump from civil suit over his actions on Jan. 6.
The Justice Department’s brief, filed in response to a request by the D.C. circuit court, argues that Trump is not immune from civil suit for his speech on Jan. 6.
The Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the California State Bar intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment before the State Bar Court.
It’s January 6—the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. There has been a lot of activity in those two years to account for what happened on that terrible day.
An interesting inversion of the traditional roles played by lawyers and judges happened at the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday in Blassingame v. Trump.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard oral arguments in the case of Blassingame v. Trump, an appeal from a civil lawsuit against the former president over Jan. 6. The question before the appeals court is: Does a president have immunity from lawsuit even when he's accused of stirring up a mob against a coordinate branch of government engaged in a function constitutionally entrusted to it? The judges seemed skeptical of the former president's argument, which was a bit of a surprise given the composition of the panel.
Today on Lawfare No Bull: On Dec. 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in Blassigame v. Trump, regarding whether former President Donald Trump should receive absolute civil immunity for allegations related to his Jan. 6, 2021 “Save America” rally and his conduct surrounding the subsequent attack on the Capitol. Trump appealed the D.C. district court’s February ruling on this issue, which did not grant him immunity.
A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-to-1 to deny former Arizona Republican State Senator Kelli Ward’s request for an injunction to block the release of her phone records to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The story of Jan. 6’s aftermath—and all of Lawfare’s coverage of it—in one place.
Though other courts have referred to the Capitol riot in passing as an “insurrection,” Judge Francis Mathew is the first to apply that term to the riot in a formal, rigorous way in a case against a New Mexico county official, Couy Griffin.