From CNN's Tierney Sneed
Former President Donald Trump stood by his broad claims of immunity against January 6-related lawsuits brought against him by police officers and congressional Democrats in a Thursday court filing with a federal appeals court.
The Justice Department has argued that Trump cannot be immune in the lawsuits if he was found to have incited violence, something Trump’s new filing called an "unprecedented specific carve out" to presidential immunity.
Such an exemption to presidential immunity would throw “open the doors for civil claims against a President and creates a stricter standard for a President than for ordinary federal officials, who have successfully claimed qualified immunity on far more egregious facts," Trump's filing said.
“DOJ’s new carve out is a sui generis rule applied ex post facto that has no underlying principle or explanation beyond ‘we think what President Trump did was bad,’” Trump argued in the new filing. “This is not how the rule of law works.”
The US DC Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether the former president can be held liable for his conduct in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in a civil lawsuit brought by US Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers.
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