Trump’s Presidential Immunity Can’t Save Him In 2020 Civil Rights Lawsuit
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A federal judge ruled on Monday that former President Donald Trump does not have absolute immunity to protect him from a 2020 civil rights lawsuit for his conduct, according to CNN.
Civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization have brought suit against Trump and the Republican National Committee. They claim that both Trump and the RNC actively tried to disenfranchise voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.
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Trump has long said that civil lawsuits don’t apply to him because of perceived immunity because he was president. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the DC District Court disagrees with this notion because if Trump is found liable, such conduct will fall outside his official duties.
“If Former President Trump disrupted the certification of the electoral vote count, as Plaintiffs allege here, such actions would not constitute executive action in defense of the Constitution. For these reasons, the Court concludes that Former President Trump is not immune from monetary damages in this suit,” Sullivan wrote.
While Judge Sullivan has ruled against Trump in this case, this does not determine whether the former President is guilty of what is being said in the lawsuit. However, the judge wrote that he believes Trump is still a threat to voting rights because of his continued spread of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
“President Trump continues to spread false claims about the 2022 elections and continues to attempt to pressure officials into nullifying the election results: Plaintiffs extensively allege the efforts of Former President Trump and his allies as recently as March 2022 to get state officials to overturn the election results; to endorse and provide financial support to candidates for office who supported his false claims of election fraud; all while fundraising for the 2024 Presidential Election. These allegations are perhaps the opposite of what the Trump Defendants term ‘vague suggestions of fear or intimidation,’” the judge wrote.
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