Trump May Have Dodged His Criminal Cases — But A Slew Of Civil Lawsuits Loom

Donald Trump isn’t off the hook for Jan. 6 just yet.

Though the criminal cases against him are all but dead, Trump is likely to be fighting eight civil lawsuits — from members of Congress and injured police officers — deep into his second term. They may be the last form of legal redress Trump faces for his role in spurring the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Those lawsuits have been steadily advancing for years, largely overshadowed by the explosive Jan. 6 committee and grand jury investigations. But now that the criminal cases have imploded, they’ve become a last stand of sorts for those seeking to hold Trump accountable for the chaos his supporters wrought that day.

“These cases, unlike the criminal case, will not be affected by the election,” said Joseph Sellers, a lawyer representing 10 current and former Democratic House members suing Trump and members of two far-right groups involved in the riot, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. “Our clients suffered real injuries that entitle them to relief, but also I think are seeking some measure of accountability given President Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 events and the events leading up to it.”

Trump’s election effectively scuttled special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump, but a unanimous Supreme Court ruling from more than two decades ago says civil litigation can proceed against a sitting president. The high court ruled that those cases don’t need to end because of the potential to distract the chief executive.

And a complicated appeals court ruling in 2023 allowed the Jan. 6 lawsuits to move forward despite Trump’s claims of presidential immunity — a decision that helped form the basis of the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling on Trump’s immunity from criminal proceedings. Trump is still waiting for a ruling on whether he’s immune from the lawsuits because he was acting as president as he riled up the crowd at the ellipse that day, as he’s argued. If he’s held liable for inciting the violence at the Capitol, Trump could be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

“This is something that should be brought to trial during the second administration of President Trump,” Sellers added. “We’re not suggesting that the president be treated like any other defendant, but that should not stop the cases from proceeding to trial.”

On Friday, the attorneys in the case met for a brief update, and Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Shaw said he anticipated additional delays in the case because the president-elect’s lead attorney, David Warrington, had just been named White House counsel.

The Jan. 6-related suits are only a portion of Trump’s legal hangover. Also looming are massive civil judgments rendered against him over the past year: $450 million he owes to New York state over what a judge concluded was pervasive fraud in his business empire there and about $97 million he owes to New York writer E. Jean Carroll in suits she brought relating to her claim that he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. (Trump is appealing all those cases.)

Trump is also a defendant in other long-running lawsuits, including one seeking to hold him accountable for unleashing federal law enforcement agents on Black Lives Matter protesters and another claiming he defamed the wrongly accused “Central Park 5” during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September.

Adding to the unwieldy heap of litigation are a slew of suits Trump himself has filed in recent years, accusing media organizations, his political opponents and others of spreading defamatory stories about him or otherwise treating him unfairly.

Some viewed those cases as publicity stunts aimed at boosting his campaign to return to the White House, but now Trump faces the potential of being forced to give sworn testimony. As he tries to fill out his administration and launch his promised policy agenda, those depositions — and the sessions he’ll need with lawyers to prepare for them — could be a significant distraction.

Trump could avoid that predicament by dropping the cases he filed. So far, there’s no sign he’ll do so, and a spokesperson said the president-elect intends to fight on.

“President Trump will continue to hold those who have committed, and are committing wrongdoings, accountable for blatantly false and dishonest reporting, which serves no public interest and only seeks to interfere in our elections on behalf of political partisans,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the transition.

He’s pursuing a defamation lawsuit against ABC for asserting that a civil jury found that he raped Carroll, when the jury actually found him liable for sexual abuse. (A federal judge in New York ruled it was accurate to say Trump was found liable for rape in “common modern parlance.”)

Trump is also battling with publisher Simon & Schuster over the rights to recorded interviews he gave to journalist Bob Woodward. He’s pressing suits against CBS for its handling of an interview with Harris and the Pulitzer Prize board for reaffirming awards it gave to the New York Times and Washington Post for their reporting on ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia — a claim Trump often derides as “the Russia hoax.”

Separately, Trump is fighting in a Georgia-based federal appeals court to reinstate a sweeping lawsuit he filed against Hillary Clinton and members of the intelligence community, an overtly political attack that resulted in a judge imposing a $1 million sanction against him and his attorneys.

All the civil suits expose Trump to the possibility of being subject to court orders to testify in depositions that are typically recorded on video and sometimes released publicly. The deadline to complete depositions in the ABC case is Dec. 9 after a judge refused an extension sought by both sides. An ABC spokesperson declined to comment on whether the network is seeking to depose the president-elect in the case, which was set for closed-door mediation on Dec 12.

In a recent letter to the judge presiding over the suit related to the Woodward interview recordings, a Trump lawyer expressed confidence that the case could proceed.

“The issues in this case, namely the unlicensed for-profit use of President Trump’s voice that was recorded in an unofficial interview, is [sic] both timely and ripe, for fear of further unaccounted for profit being made from the President’s voice,” Trump attorney Robert Garson wrote. “In addition, we trust that the Court can accommodate a discovery process that will cause minimal interference with the President’s impeding [sic] obligations.”

Despite Trump’s bluster about confronting his opponents in court, he has a history of dropping or settling cases when he decides the political costs of pursuing them are too great.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump railed against what he said were meritless lawsuits over his defunct Trump University business that offered seminars and mentoring in real estate. A judge delayed a trial in the civil cases until after the 2016 election, but when Trump won, he grudgingly settled, avoiding a distracting courtroom spectacle by paying out $25 million to resolve claims that the classes were a scam.

Last fall, as Trump was ramping up his latest presidential campaign, he abruptly dropped a suit against his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen after a judge insisted that Trump sit for a deposition on a day he had scheduled a campaign rally in New Hampshire. A spokesperson said Trump elected to “temporarily pause” the litigation accusing Cohen of breaching attorney-client privilege and a confidentiality agreement with Trump. The case has not been refiled.

Of all the pending civil suits, the Jan. 6 civil cases are shaping up as the marquee courtroom battle of the Trump presidency.

The first hurdle in the cases is whether Trump is immune from the lawsuits altogether; he argues his actions on Jan. 6 were connected to his official duties as president. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who has been holding periodic status updates with the lawyers for months, said Friday that he wants to rule by summer on the immunity issue.

If the Obama-appointed judge rules that the cases can proceed to trial, Trump is certain to appeal, likely back to the Supreme Court, which could again consider the contours of presidential immunity.

Trump has yet to be deposed in the Jan. 6 suits, which Cheung denounced as part of “the weaponization of the justice system.” Both sides have agreed to put off Trump's testimony until the immunity issue is resolved.