The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s effort to use presidential immunity as a shield against Jan. 6 civil lawsuits ran into stiff questioning in a Washington courtroom on Jan. 10, 2022. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta heard argument on Trump’s motion to dismiss claims tied to the Capitol attack and pressed lawyers on where the line should be drawn between official presidential duties and political conduct. He did not issue a ruling from the bench that day.

Trump’s lawyers were urging a broad reading of immunity. Their position was that Trump’s speech on the Ellipse, and the conduct surrounding it, fell within the scope of his presidential role. The plaintiffs — including lawmakers and police officers who say they were harmed in the attack — argued the opposite: that Trump was acting as a candidate and office-holder trying to cling to power, not as a president carrying out government business. That distinction matters because civil immunity has generally been understood to cover official acts, not campaign-style pressure or post-election maneuvering.

The hearing mattered because a ruling for Trump could have shut down or narrowed the lawsuits early. A ruling against him would let the cases keep moving through discovery and later stages of litigation. But on Jan. 10, the court did not decide the question. Mehta’s skepticism at argument was the story of the day; the actual ruling came later, on Feb. 18, 2022.

The legal fight also exposed how Trump’s side was trying to stretch the concept of presidential protection. The more his lawyers framed the Jan. 6 speech and the surrounding pressure campaign as official conduct, the more they risked collapsing the difference between governing and campaigning. Plaintiffs’ lawyers said that was the wrong test. They argued the court should look at what Trump was doing and why, not just at the office he had occupied when he did it.

For Trump, the hearing was not a final loss. But it was a warning sign. Mehta’s questions made clear he was not prepared to accept the idea that a president can automatically rebrand political conduct as an official act just because it happened while he was in office. At minimum, the hearing suggested Trump’s immunity defense was going to face a hard climb before any court would let it wipe the Jan. 6 claims away.