WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES – A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Friday that former President Donald Trump can be sued over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in which his supporters attempted to overturn the certification of his election loss to Joe Biden to thwart.

Trump could now face civil lawsuits over the violent clashes in which a mob overran law enforcement in the nerve center of American democracy. More than 1,200 people were arrested in the melee.

Two Capitol Police officers and several Democratic lawmakers sued Trump in 2021, saying he may have incited violence in his public comments to supporters before they descended on Capitol Hill.

Trump’s legal team had argued that as president he enjoyed immunity for his actions, including comments in which he told his supporters to “fight like hell” as Congress prepared to certify his election defeat.

“It is not that President Trump failed to establish his claim to immunity … it is that he did not do so,” said the decision by a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

“If a president who is in his first term elects to seek a second term, his campaign for re-election is not an official presidential act,” it said.

“When a sitting president running for a second term … speaks at a campaign rally sponsored and organized by his re-election campaign committee, he is not discharging the official duties of the presidency. He acts as an office seeker, not as an office holder.”

Trump “acknowledges that he conducted his campaign – including his post-election efforts to change the declared results in his favor – in his personal capacity as a presidential candidate and not in his official capacity as sitting president,” it said.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ELECTION STOLEN
Trump, 77, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the November 2020 election won by Biden.

Trump apparently knew he had lost the election – his advisers told him so and his legal challenges went nowhere – but continued to insist that the election was “stolen” by his Democratic rival.

He pressured election officials in Georgia to “find” the votes he needed to win and tried to force then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election results at the Jan. 6 session of Congress.

After his fiery speech near the White House, Trump then watched on television for hours as his loyal supporters violently attacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives over the January 6 insurrection but acquitted by the Senate.

He was indicted on racketeering charges in Georgia over allegations he tried to overturn the 2020 election results in the southern state.

He also faces a federal lawsuit over alleged mishandling of top-secret documents after he left the White House.