The US Department of Justice said that former President Donald Trump could be sued by Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers who were injured during the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
The department’s position that Trump is not immune from such lawsuits was made clear in a memorandum filed with a federal appeals court on Thursday.
The memo was filed by lawyers in the Department of Justice’s civil division and has no bearing on a separate criminal investigation being conducted by a special counsel for the department into whether Trump can be criminally charged over efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election before the Capitol riot.
Last December, former President Trump rushed to accuse the Parliamentary Investigation Committee into the attack on the Capitol building of seeking to prevent him from running for the upcoming presidential elections in 2024 by recommending that the Ministry of Justice file “false accusations” against him.
At the time, Trump said in a post on his social networking platform, “Truth Social”: “These people don’t realize that when they come after me, people who love freedom gather around me. This makes me stronger. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Americans know I paid 20,000 security personnel.” to prevent violence on the sixth of January, and that I went to them on television asking them to go home.”
“People understand that the DBI is out to stop me from running for president because they know I’m going to win and this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment, a partisan attempt to marginalize me and the Republican Party,” he added.