Trump, Eyeing Supreme Court Appeal, Wins Delay in Ruling Holding Him Responsible for January 6

A federal judge on Thursday paused his own ruling holding President Trump civilly liable — to the tune of millions of dollars — for the events of January 6, 2021, a move that sets the stage for an eventual Supreme Court appeal by the president over the far boundary of executive power. Both the original ruling handed down in March and Thursday’s delay in enforcing it came from Judge Amit Mehta of the District of Columbia. He determined in March that Mr. Trump “had failed to meet his burden of showing that his alleged conduct up to and on January 6, 2021, fell within the outer perimeter of his official duties” as president. That failure, Judge Mehta reckoned, meant that Mr. Trump could not claim immunity for the riot at the Capitol. The District of Columbia Circuit affirmed his ruling. At the center of the case against Mr. Trump is the speech he gave at the Oval on the day Congress was certifying the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden. Mr. Trump claims that the oration was part of his presidential duties. Judge Mehta, though, found that Mr. Trump “has not shown that the Speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. The content of the Ellipse Speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity.”Judge Mehta determined that when Mr. Trump was speaking at the Ellipse he was acting not as a president but as a “candidate” for office — and therefore out of the bounds of the presidency’s protections. Mr. Trump’s legal team insists in a statement that “on January 6, 2021, President Trump was acting on behalf of the American people, carrying out his official duties as President of the United States.”Judge Mehta also ruled that Mr. Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on January 2, 2021, were the “words of an office-seeker imploring a state official to alter the outcome of Georgia’s election, not those of an incumbent President acting in his official capacity.” In that colloquy Mr. Trump asked the Peach State official to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia — President Biden’s margin of victory. At the time, Judge Mehta, an appointee of President Obama, noted that his ruling “is not the final pronouncement on immunity for any particular act. President Trump remains free to reassert official-acts immunity as a defense at trial. But the burden will remain his and will be subject to a higher standard of proof.” The pause ordered by Judge Mehta Thursday clears the way for Mr. Trump to pursue a writ of certiorari to the high court. Mr. Trump could make that appeal immediately but is more likely to exhaust his options at lower courts first. The lawsuit was first brought in 2021 by a group of Democratic lawmakers and policemen who were at the Capitol that day. Mr. Trump has claimed that presidential immunity bars the claims out of hand, an argument that appeared even stronger after the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune.Trump, though, covered only criminal cases, where the threat to the disruption of the performance of the president’s duties — he is commanded to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” — would appear to be at its apogee. In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, from 1981, the high court held that the president “is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.”In Clinton v. Jones, from 1997, a unanimous high court — the decision was written by Justice John Paul Stevens — found that a sitting president has no immunity from federal civil litigation, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the presidency. A concurrence written by Justice Stephen Breyer marked that immunity could apply if the president can show that the lawsuit interfered with the obligations of the office. The civil case against Mr. Trump is especially significant because the criminal cases against him for January 6 — brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, respectively — have both been dismissed. In the wake of Trump, Mr. Smith generated a second indictment that he claimed comported with the court’s new doctrine on immunity. The case concluded before a court had a chance to test those claims.The eventual — seemingly inevitable — petition by the president could double as an invitation to extend Trump to civil cases and to overturn Nixon and Clinton in favor of an expansive doctrine of immunity for civil cases.

Trump, Eyeing Supreme Court Appeal, Wins Delay in Ruling Holding Him Responsible for January 6

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