Donald Trump has opted out of filing a petition to the Supreme Court that would oppose an appeals court decision from December which rejected his immunity arguments. As a result, he is now more susceptible to legal charges in the coming months, as lawsuits pertaining to the Jan. 6 insurrection go forward.
Trump had until last Thursday to issue a formal petition against his affiliation with the court proceedings, but he did not act on the deadline.
Now, lawsuits seeking to hold Trump personally accountable for his role in the attack on the Capitol can move forward.
However, the appeals court did clarify that Trump could still claim immunity later in the proceedings in three cases brought by Capitol Police Officers and members of Congress.
The lead plaintiff in the civil immunity is James Blassingame, a Capitol Police Officer who was injured in the insurrection. Fellow plaintiffs from various lawsuits that were also reviewed for appeal include lawmakers who were at the Capitol that day.
“We look forward to moving on with proving our claims and getting justice for our Capitol Police officer clients who were injured defending our democracy from defendant Trump,” reported Kristy Parker, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in one of the cases.
The civil lawsuits against Trump are separate from the criminal case being brought against him that is also linked to the Jan. 6 riots.
This past Monday, Trump asked the justices to put that specific case on hold on immunity grounds.
Trumps’s lawyers have argued that any actions he took on Jan. 6 are covered by the range of his duties as president, which therefore grants him immunity from civil/criminal liability.
However, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected that argument, ruling that Trump was acting in his role as a political candidate running for office, rather than as president.
Though the court added that when the cases proceed in district court, Trump “must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question,” in order to demonstrate that he was acting in his official capacity. In this case, he could then seek to have the lawsuits dismissed.
In terms of Trump’s active criminal case, a different panel of judges on the same appeals court has maintained that even if it was found that he acted officially as president, his immunity claim would still be unlikely to hold water.
