WASHINGTON (AP) – The acquittal of Donald Trump during his second indictment is perhaps not the last word on whether he is to blame for the deadly Capitol riot. The next step for the former president could be the courts.
Trump is now a private citizen and is stripped of his protection against legal liability that the presidency has given him. That change in status is something that even Republicans who voted Saturday as an acquittal of the incitement to the January 6 attack stressed because they were urging Americans to move from accusation.
“President Trump is still accountable for everything he did while in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations expired,” said Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. He insisted the courts were a more appropriate place to hold Trump accountable than a Senate hearing.
“He hasn’t gotten away with anything yet,” McConnell said. “Train.”
The uprising at the Capitol, in which five people died, is just one of the lawsuits that overshadowed Trump in the months following his election. He is also exposed to legal exposure by Georgia about an alleged pressure campaign on state election officials, and in Manhattan about hush-money payments and business transactions.
But Trump’s guilt under the law for inciting the riot is by no means clear. The standard is high among court decisions that go back 50 years. Trump could also be sued by victims, although he has constitutional protection, including if he acted while performing the duties of president. These matters would amount to his intention.
Lawyers say that a proper criminal investigation takes time, and that the limitation period is at least five years to file a federal case. New evidence emerges every day.
“They are far too early in their investigation to know this,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and former federal prosecutor. “They have arrested 200 people, they are still pursuing hundreds of people. All the people can be potential witnesses because some said ‘Trump made me do this’. ”
What is not known, she said, is what Trump did during the riot, and that may be the key. Accusation did not yield many answers. But federal investigators in a criminal investigation have far more power to force evidence through subpoenas for grand juries.
“It’s not an easy matter, but it’s just because what we know now, and it can change,” Levenson said.
The legal issue is whether Trump or one of the speakers during the protest near the White House that preceded the assault on the Capitol incited violence and whether they knew their words would have the effect. This is the standard set by the Supreme Court in its 1969 decision in Brandenburg against Ohio., which overturned the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader.
Trump urged the crowd on January 6 to perform at the Capitol, where Congress is meeting to confirm Joe Biden’s presidential election. Trump even promised to go along with his supporters, even though he ultimately did not. “You will never take back our country with weakness,” Trump said.
He also spent weeks urging supporters about his increasingly belligerent language and false elections urging them to ‘stop the steal’.
Trump’s prosecutors said he did nothing illegal. Trump admitted in a statement after the acquittal that he had committed wrongdoing.
Federal prosecutors said they were looking at all angles of the assault on the Capitol and whether the violence was incited. District Attorney General of the District of Columbia, Karl Racine, said district prosecutors are considering prosecuting Trump under local law that criminalizes statements that motivate people to violence.
“Let it be known that the Attorney General’s Office has a potential charge that it may use,” Racine told MSNBC last month. The charge would be an offense with a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment.
Trump’s leading White House lawyer has repeatedly warned Trump on January 6 that he could be held accountable. This message was delivered in part to condemn Trump for condemning the violence perpetrated in his name and to admit that he would leave office on January 20 when Biden was inaugurated. He did leave the White House that day.
Since then, many of the accused in the riots say they acted directly on behalf of Trump. Some offered to testify. A telephone conversation between Trump and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy came to the fore during the indictment in which McCarthy, while rioters stormed into the Capitol, begged Trump to turn off the mob. Trump replied, “Well, Kevin, I think these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
The McCarthy call is important because it could indicate Trump’s intent, state of mind and knowledge of the rioters’ actions.
Court cases that attempt to provoke incitement often clash with the first amendment. In recent years, federal judges have taken a hard line against the law on riots. The federal appeals court in Virginia narrowed the Anti-Riot Act, with a maximum sentence of five years, because it auctioned off constitutionally protected speech. The court found that invalid parts of the law that included speech tended to ‘encourage’ or ‘promote’ a riot, as well as a speech to incite a riot or simply engage in advocacy for violence. .
The same court upheld the convictions of two members of a white supremacist group who admitted to punching and kicking counter-protesters during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
It is possible that federal prosecutors will decide not to file charges, and if Trump is indicted in one of the many other separate investigations, federal prosecutors could decide that justice is done elsewhere.
Prosecutors in Atlanta recently opened a criminal investigation Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss in Georgia, including a phone call on Jan. 2 in which he urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to stop Biden’s narrow victory.
And Cyrus R. Vance Jr., District Attorney, Manhattan, is in the midst of an 18-month criminal investigation into the grand jury, which is partly focused on payments made to Trump on Trump’s behalf, and whether Trump or his businesses manipulated the value of assets – in some cases inflated and to a minimum limit others – to obtain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
North Carolina GOP Senator Thom Tillis, who along with McConnell and 41 other Republicans voted to acquit, argued that accusation is not the right way to hold him accountable because Trump is no longer in office.
‘The ultimate responsibility is through our criminal justice system where political passions are checked and the thorough process is constitutionally mandatory. No president is above the law or indemnified from criminal prosecution, and that includes former President Trump. ”
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Associated Press authors Jim Mustian and Michael R. Sisak in New York and Mark Sherman contributed to this report.
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Follow Colleen Long on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ctlong1