WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorneys for President Donald Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob's attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn't rule from the bench after hearing arguments from Trump attorneys and lawyers for Democratic members of Congress who sued the Republican president and allies over the Jan. 6. 2021, attack.
Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Trump's attorneys argue that his conduct leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day of the riot is protected by presidential immunity because he was acting in his official capacity.
“The entire point of immunity is to give the president clarity to speak in the moment as the commander-in-chief,” Trump attorney Joshua Halpern told the judge.
The lawmakers' lawyers argue Trump can't prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. And the U.S. Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity, they contend.
“President Trump has the burden of proof here,” said plaintiffs' attorney Joseph Sellers. “We submit that he hasn't come anywhere close to satisfying that burden.”
At the end of Friday's hearing, Mehta said the arguments gave him “a lot to think about” and he would rule “as soon as we can.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation.
The civil claims survived Trump's sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. Over 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.
Halpern said immunity enables the president to act “boldly and fearlessly.”
“Immunity exists to protect the president's prerogatives,” he said.
Plaintiffs' lawyers argue that the context and circumstances of the president's remarks on Jan. 6 — not just the content of his words — are key to establishing whether he is immune from liability.
“You have to look at what happened leading up to January 6th,” Sellers said.
FILE - President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
FILE - Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan has come to represent the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in New York City, with agents carrying out chaotic and sometimes violent arrests in the hallway as migrants leave hearings.
Now the court is serving as a front in a different kind of battle: one of the city’s most closely watched congressional races.
In the Democratic primary between incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — for a district so solidly blue that the June primary is considered its deciding election — both candidates have made the Trump administration's treatment of migrants at 26 Federal Plaza a feature of their campaigns, but with decidedly different approaches.
Goldman — an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and former prosecutor who was lead counsel for President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — has approached the topic with a lawyerly bent that leverages the power of his office.
He sued the administration to open immigration detention centers to members of Congress, conducts oversight visits and turned his office across the street into what he's called a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services.
After a recent visit, Goldman credited his oversight work as a reason conditions at a holding facility inside the building have improved.
“What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” he told The Associated Press outside 26 Federal Plaza after he toured the detention center that is closed to the public.
Meanwhile, Lander — a progressive city government stalwart who is running with the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has acted as protester and court observer, watching hearings and attempting to accompany immigrants out of the building past masked federal agents.
His efforts have gotten him arrested twice, the most recent headed to a trial scheduled to take place just before the primary.
“I would characterize his oversight function as strongly worded letters," Lander told AP when asked about Goldman's approach. “And my oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you.”
Lander's first arrest happened last year when he linked arms with a person authorities were attempting to detain in the hallway outside the court. Lander was running for mayor at the time, and the arrest gave his campaign a jolt of excitement at a time when Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were considered the front-runners in the race.
A few months later, after losing the mayoral primary but not long before launching his congressional campaign, Lander was arrested again during a large protest at the building and hit with a misdemeanor obstruction charge.
But instead of accepting a deal that would have made the case go away in six months, Lander instead opted to go to trial. He said the case would extract information about the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts at the building.
Goldman dismissed Lander's efforts as performative.
"I don't understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” Goldman said.
This week, Lander returned to 26 Federal Plaza to sit in on hearings. But just before entering the building, his team got word that federal agents were lingering outside an immigration hearing at a different federal courtroom in a building across the street. He raced over and eventually found the agents, who were wearing masks and milling around in the court's waiting room.
“The challenge is trying to figure out who they're going to arrest,” Lander said, popping out of the hearing, where he sat in a back row and took notes. After a while, the agents walked away from the hearing room, down a hallway and exited the floor. It was not clear why they left.
“Maybe we have different styles," Lander said of his opponent after the agents departed. He later went back across the street and filmed a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.
FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., left, speaks to the federal agents at the Jacob K. Javits federal building, June 18, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
FILE - New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI agents outside federal immigration court, June 17, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, File)
FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol, July 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)
Candidate for U.S. Congress Brad Lander appears outside a Federal Immigration Courtroom, in New York, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
