Trump can't shake claims over Jan. 6 Capitol attack years later

Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg News on Apr 1, 2026

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WASHINGTON — More than five years after violent riots at the U.S. Capitol, President Donald Trump still can’t avoid lawsuits seeking to hold him legally responsible for the chaos that temporarily disrupted Congress’ certification of the 2020 election.

A federal judge in Washington handed a multipart loss to Trump on Tuesday night, keeping civil claims alive in multiple, consolidated lawsuits that were brought by Democratic members of Congress and law enforcement officers. It’s one of the last remaining legal fights against Trump predating his second term in the White House.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta made three key findings: that Trump isn’t entitled to presidential immunity against all of the allegations against him, that his statements to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, “plausibly were inciting words” that aren’t protected by the Constitution, and that the U.S. Justice Department can’t step into the case to take over the defense.

The 79-page opinion is a significant setback for Trump, but it isn’t a final ruling on the merits of the claims alleging that he was liable for the attack by his supporters, who opposed results showing Joe Biden won the election. Mehta’s decision is likely to set off another round of appeals, creating more delays for a case that already has stretched for years.

An attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represents police officers who sued, said in a statement that the “ruling is an important step toward accountability for the violent attack on the Capitol and our democracy. Also, it rightfully validates our clients’ profoundly courageous pursuit of justice in the face of such political violence.”

Trump renewed his immunity bid after Mehta rejected it at earlier phases of the case. After reviewing evidence and hundreds of pages of filings submitted by both sides, the judge said he reached the same conclusion as before.

Mehta’s main finding is that Trump failed to prove that all of the actions at issue in the litigation were “official acts” that took place before the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to confirm his loss to Biden. During many of those critical moments, the judge wrote, Trump was acting as a candidate, and the presidency has no official interest in who wins an election.

Trump’s non-immune conduct included much of his outreach to state and federal lawmakers to undo Biden’s wins in swing states, social media posts he sent and the speech he gave at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 to his supporters before many of them went to the Capitol.

Those conclusions doomed Trump’s immunity claim as well as the Justice Department’s move to substitute the U.S. government as the defendant in the case, the judge explained.

Mehta also denied a request to revisit his earlier findings that the First Amendment’s free speech protections didn’t cover Trump’s remarks during the Jan. 6 Ellipse speech, which included the line, “We fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Trump has long accused critics of taking those words out of context, noting that he also said his supporters would be marching to the Capitol “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

The judge wrote that he had considered the speech within the “comprehensive” context of events leading up to it, including the “air of distrust and anger” that Trump had fueled and evidence that the president and his advisers would have known that some of his supporters were calling for violence.

Given the significance of his ruling about the First Amendment, Mehta took the step of immediately putting it on track for an appeal.

Mehta was appointed to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama. His past cases included the criminal prosecution of members of the far-right Oath Keepers group for their role in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump later commuted prison sentences Mehta ordered for some those defendants but didn’t fully pardon them. Since Trump returned to office, Mehta has handed the administration a mix of wins and losses in challenges to funding cuts and firings.

The case is Lee v. Trump, 21-cv-400, US District Court, District of Columbia.

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