The Dictatorship
Trump’s Justice Department seeks to shield president in Jan. 6 civil cases
In the recent past, there was reason to believe Donald Trump might face criminal accountability for Jan. 6 and his actions after his 2020 defeat. Those hopes were dashed, however, by the results of the 2024 election and the demise of former special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the president.
There is, however, another potential avenue for accountability — a series of civil lawsuits filed against Trump — though as The New York Times reportedthe Justice Department appears to be taking steps to derail this option, too.
The Justice Department made an unusual effort on Thursday to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Department lawyers argued in court papers filed to the judge overseeing the cases that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and so the federal government itself should take his place as the defendant. That move, if successful, could protect Mr. Trump from having to face judgment for his role in the Capitol attack and from having to pay financial damages if he were found liable.
The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by BLN or NBC News, added that the legal maneuver appeared to be the latest effort to use the powers of the Justice Department to Trump’s advantage “by effectively having himself removed from the lawsuits.”
For those who might benefit from a refresherin the aftermath of the insurrectionist violence, among those who filed lawsuits against Trump were police officers injured during the insurrectionist violence. In fact, multiple cases were filed:
- In March 2021two Capitol Police officers, James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, sued Trump, claiming he was liable for the injuries they suffered during the riot.
- In August 2021seven more police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot sued the former president.
- In January 2022three more police officers — including two who aided the evacuation of lawmakers — sued Trump, seeking damages for their physical and emotional injuries.
- In January 2023the longtime partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the Jan. 6 riot, filed a wrongful death civil suit against Trump.
Those civil cases have since been consolidated and are pending before U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta.
To be sure, even if Trump were to lose the civil suits, there would be no criminal consequences, but they could prove to be politically embarrassing and financially costly. Indeed, let’s not forget that he has suffered several major legal setbacks and defeats in recent years — the E. Jean Carroll case, the Trump Organization’s fraud case, the demise of his fraudulent charity, the demise of his fraudulent “university,” et al. — and those were all civil cases.
What’s more, while the Justice Department has a policy prohibiting federal criminal charges against a sitting president, the Supreme Court has already ruled that sitting presidents can face civil suits while in office, and claims from Trump’s lawyers that he’s immune in these cases have already been rejected by two courts.
It’s against this backdrop that the Justice Department decided to intervene. The Times’ report added, “The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted.”
It’s an argument rooted in the idea that those who claim to have been harmed by the president’s actions on Jan. 6 should be able to sue the federal government, but shouldn’t be able to sue the Republican directly.
Will this work? Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
ByDavid Rohde
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there is “no reason” to doubt a new report by five European nations that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed in a Russian government prison with poison found in Latin American dart frogs.
A fatal toxin not found naturally in Russia — epibatidine — was “conclusively” discovered in samples of Navalny’s body by a joint investigation conducted by Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, according to a joint statement by the nations on Saturday.
The toxin is only known to exist in poison dart frogs in Central and South America. One species, the phantasmal poison frog, contains a chemical that is 200 times more potent than morphine.
“It’s a troubling report,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference during a visit to Slovakia on Sunday. “We don’t have any reason to question it.”
It was not clear why the United States did not participate in the investigation of Navalny’s death. But the finding comes amid rising support in the Senate for a bill that would impose sweeping new sanctions against the government of Vladimir Putin, which has been opposed by the Trump administration.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted on the closing day of the Munich Security Conference, where Rubio received a standing ovationthat 84 out of 100 senators have signed on to co-sponsor the bill authored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“I don’t understand the reluctance to go after Vladimir Putin and what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” Shaheen told a group of reporters. “The failure by the United States to act has extended this war.”
Russian officials have repeatedly denied playing any role in the death of Navalny two years ago in a government-run penal colony in the Arctic. They called the new European report “a Western propaganda hoax,” according to Russia’s state news agency.
The report comes as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to meet with both Russian and Iranian officials on Tuesday in Geneva. The goal of the Russia talks is to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine by a June deadline the administration has set. (Witkoff and Kushner are also set to join a second round of nuclear talks with Iranian officials in Geneva on the same day.)
Critics of Trump, who promised to end the war days after returning to office, say Russia has not been seriously negotiating and is simply playing for time so it can gain ground on the battlefield. Democrats have also expressed concerns over reports that Witkoff has been negotiating business deals during peace talks with Kirill Dmitriev, a former Wall Street banker who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Dmitriev pitched $12 trillion in bilateral economic agreements with the U.S. It is unclear how such large deals could be achieved. The $12 trillion figure is about four times the size of Russia’s 2025 gross domestic product.
A European diplomat whose country has negotiated with Russia in the past told MS NOW that Moscow has repeatedly made such investment offers. But the business entities end up being largely Russian controlled. “They lure you in,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Shaheen expressed skepticism as well.
“I’m concerned about all things Russian in this administration,” Shaheen said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I’m beginning to become one with respect to Putin and President Trump.”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
A glove with DNA found near 84-year-old missing Nancy Guthrie’s home appears to match those worn by a masked person caught on surveillance footage, the FBI said Sunday.
“The FBI received preliminary results yesterday on 2/14 and are awaiting further testing,” the bureau said in a statement. “This process typically takes 24 hours from when the FBI receives DNA.”
The FBI said investigators collected “approximately 16 gloves in various areas near” Guthrie’s house in Tucson, Arizonawhere she was last seen on Jan. 31. Most of those gloves were “searchers’s gloves that they discarded in various areas when they searched the vicinity” but the glove with the “DNA profile recovered is different and appears to match the gloves of the subject in the surveillance video,” the FBI said.
“What we have is a lead here. The glove retrieved would need to have the victim’s DNA or some other forensic material to tie it to the home,” a law-enforcement source familiar with the investigation cautioned. “It must be connected to the home and victim. That would make the glove actual evidence, at this point it’s a lead. A good lead.”
The FBI said said the glove was found in a field approximately two miles from Guthrie’s house. The glove resembles the one on the hand of a person who was captured on porch camera video footage at the home of NBC “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie’s mother the night she went missing.
The agency said it is awaiting quality control and official confirmation before putting the individual’s profile into the bureau’s national database, which could take up to 24 hours.
The FBI has described the man captured in photographs and on video as approximately 5’9”-5’10” with an average build. In addition to gloves, he was also seen wearing a ski mask and a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack. The agency on Thursday increased its reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction of anyone involved in Guthrie’s disappearance to $100,000.
Guthrie was reported missing by her family on Feb. 1. Sheriff’s deputies also found blood on the front porch that was later confirmed to belong to the network host’s mother. Guthrie’s children, including Savannah, have posted several videos pleading for their mother’s release, agreeing to pay any ransom demanded and asking for help from the public.
Alex Tabet, Marc Santia and Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., co-author of the Epstein Files Transparency Acton Sunday slammed what he called Donald Trump’s “Epstein administration” for not fulfilling its legal obligation to release all government documents related to the late convicted sex offender.
Massie cited a Justice Department letter sent to Congress on Saturday defending its redactions made to the newly released final batch of Epstein documents. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” show, the GOP congressman noted the DOJ letter, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, cited “deliberative-process privilege” as a reason for withholding certain records.
“The privileges that applied to the withheld records were deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege, and attorney-client privilege.,” the Feb. 14 DOJ letter said. The letter listed the names of more than 300 people, many of whom had no direct dealings with Epstein and have long been dead, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan.
Other names include President Donald Trump, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick — who was grilled before Congress last week over his association with Epstein — Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel. None of the people listed have been accused of criminal wrongdoing with regard to Epstein’s actions.
Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who co-authored the Epstein bill, also criticized the DOJ letter regarding its redactions.
“The DOJ is once again purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email,” Khanna said on X. “To have Janis Joplin, who died when Epstein was 17, in the same list as Larry Nassar, who went to prison for the sexual abuse of hundreds of young women and child pornography, with no clarification of how either was mentioned in the files is absurd.” (The Justice Department announced in December that a letter released in a tranche of Epstein files purportedly from Epstein to Nassar, the convicted Olympic gymnastics coach, was a fake.)
Massie objected to the DOJ’s claim of privilege in withholding certain Epstein documents because, he said, the Justice Department “must release internal memos and notes and emails” related to investigative and prosecutorial decisions regarding the Epstein matter.
“It’s important they follow that because then we could find out why they didn’t prosecute Leslie Wexner,” he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. A legal representative for Wexner said in a statement that the assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Epstein investigation “stated at the time that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect” and that “Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”
Massie accused the Justice Department of taking down documents before members of Congress were able to review them in their unredacted forms. “We want to be able to look at all these files,” he said. Lawmakers have also been subject to apparent surveillance while reviewing Epstein documents in a private room at the Justice Department.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, echoed calls for answers about who was involved in the trafficking of girls and women besides convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
“We have questions for President Trump, and I think the broader issue here is why wasn’t this investigated when these accusations and these stories actually were heard by the FBI years ago?” Garcia said in a Sunday interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” show. “Where was the investigation? Where was the DOJ? And this, by the way, is an issue not just in Republican administrations, but also ones led by Democrats. We have to get answers.”
The Justice Department, in its letter to the Republican chairmen and ranking Democrats of House and Senate Judiciary Committees, said no records were withheld or redacted “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
Several of those listed have faced backlashincluding ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titlesevicted from Windsor Castle and faces a potential investigation in the U.K.
The DOJ said the lengthy list of high-profile names included in its letter includes “all government officials and politically exposed persons.” But the letter does not differentiate between people mentioned in news stories who likely had little or no connection to Epstein and those who were shown to have communicated with Epstein, Maxwell and other associates.
Massie, who is facing a primary opponent endorsed by Trump, said the president is “still with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration and they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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