Government

Rep. Eric Swalwell Sues Trump And His Obnoxious Son For Inciting MAGA Mob

It's a bold strategy, Cotton.

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(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Senate may have failed to convict Donald Trump, but House impeachment manager Eric Swalwell isn’t giving up just yet. Today the California congressman filed a civil suit against the former president, his hapless eldest son, his leaky pro bono lawyer, and Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, all of whom addressed the MAGA mob before it stormed the Capitol on January 6.

“Today I filed a civil claim against Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudolph Giuliani, and Representative Mo Brooks for inciting an attack against the Capitol that terrorized lawmakers and prevented us from doing our job of certifying the votes of the American people,” he tweeted.

“As a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants’ false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the Defendants’ express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol and stopped Congress’s counting of electoral college votes. The Defendants assembled, inflamed and incited the mob, and as such are wholly responsible for the injury and destruction that followed.”

Whether a civil suit in U.S. District Court will be an effective means of redress remains to be seen. After an exhaustive recitation of the Defendants’ behavior leading up to the insurrection, Swalwell claims that they conspired to violate his civil rights by interfering with his official duty to certify the presidential election results.

This echoes the claims made by Rep. Bennie Thompson, who alleged a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1985, better known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era law aimed at mobs who would interfere with federal officials doing their jobs. And indeed Swalwell has requested that his suit should be treated as related to Rep. Thompson’s case and placed on Judge Amit Mehta’s docket. (Naturally this has nothing to do with Mehta’s record of hostility to Trump’s wild claims of executive immunity.)

The nine counts range from the quotidian (negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, incitement), to the interesting (the KKK claim) to the HUH WHAT??? (aiding and abetting a common law assault because, although he was never physically assaulted, the presence of the mob “caused the Plaintiff to fear imminent physical harm”). It should be an fascinating First Amendment case, with Trump et al. sure to assert that they were simply exercising their right to free speech and had no idea the mob might get unruly, notwithstanding Trump’s recommendation to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on January 5 that 10,000 National Guard troops would be needed to control the crowd.

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The former president commented via his spokesman Jason Miller, who described Swalwell to the Washington Post as “a low-life with no credibility” and rehashed discredited allegations that the California congressman is a “compromised” Chinese asset.

“I make no apologies whatsoever for fighting for accurate and honest elections,” Brooks said, in comments reported by Newsweek. “In sum, I wear Communist-sympathizer Swalwell’s scurrilous and malicious lawsuit like a badge of courage.

Still waiting on Don Jr. and Rudy to poke their heads up. Let’s assume that Rudy said, “Ha, take a number, pal,” and Deej is trying to hold his jaw still long enough to form semi-coherent sentences.

Swalwell is represented by Joseph Caleb and Philip Andonian of Caleb Andonian PLLC, Matthew Kaiser and Sarah Fink of KaiserDillon PLLC, and Barry Coburn and Marc Eisenstein of Coburn and Greenbaum PLLC.

Swalwell v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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