When 74-year-old President Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial Feb. 13, the media went wild claiming victory, despite losing the case against Trump. Since Trump’s acquittal, the broadcast and print media haven’t stopped claiming victory, with lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Rasking (D-Md.) claiming victory in the court of public opinion. How ironic that most legal or quasi-legal proceedings expressly forbid the ubiquitous public influence from entering the courtroom or, in this case, the Senate. Now 72-year-old Rep. Bernie Thomson (D-Miss.), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, files suit in U.S. District Court using the obsolete, 1871 post –reconstruction Ku Klux Klan Act in another futile attempt to retaliate against Trump for delivering a First Amendment-protected speech Jan. 6 before the riot broke out at the Capitol.
Had Democrats convicted Trump Feb. 13, it’s doubtful Thomson and other would continue the legal barrage against Trump and his 76-year-old personal attorney former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Thomson and other Democrats didn’t like Trump’s legal team led by 58-year-old Philadelphia attorney Bruce Castor who eviscerated House Managers’ case against Trump in his closing argument. Castor told senators that House and Senate Democrats have tried to impeach Trump from the day he took office, spending countless hours and millions of dollars accusing him of Russian collusion, serving the interests of the Kremlin. Yet Thomson thinks another civil suit against Trump under the arcane KKK Act or Civil Rights Act of 1871 will somehow prevail in 2021. No one in the wildest imagination had now conceptualized the Capitol Hill riot and mob scene as white supremacy.
Thomson would never apply the KKK Act to the left-wing rioters that torched American cities, looting, burning and anarchy over last summer. Whatever one said about the Jan. 6 riot, there was no mention that it was a white supremacist event, along the lines of the KKK Act. Thomson’s suit should should be tossed out quickly, noting that the Impeachment Trial transcript mentions nothing about civil rights violations, despite making a mess of things for white and black lawmakers. Thomson’s acting like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was targeted at black people, seeing the event as like the March 7, 1965 racial violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. “All I wanted to do was do my job, and the insurrection that occurred prevented me from doing that,” Thomson said. Thomson, who’s black, files suit under the 1871 KKK Act, something completely irrelevant to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
When you think about why House managers lost their case, it had more to do with “incitement of insurrection” against Trump. House managers couldn’t prove that Trump incited violence or that the mob scene was actually an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. Thomson referred, as most Democrats, to insurrection, when they never do that when left-wing agitators burn down, occupied American cities and vandalize federal court houses over the summer. Only when white people riot to blacks invoke civil rights legislation. But Thomson knows that House managers did not make a civil rights case against Trump while they accused him of “incitement of insurrection,” a high bar to prove, largely because the misanthropes, misfits and losers that attacked the Capitol Jan. 6 were not armed with automatic weapons. Calling it an “insurrection” was never supported by the facts.
Civil rights legislation, like the KKK Act, was not designed to make fake cases of racism against any particular group. Of course the real reason the House managers’ case failed was because it was built verbatim on Democrat media talking points, accusing Trump of inciting a riot with his speech on the Ellipse or South Park of the White House. House managers tried, but failed, to prove Trump’s statements after the Nov. 8, 2020 election claiming he ‘won by a landslide” ginned up the crowd to engage in violence at the Capitol. “The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save American rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence,” said Thomson, making Trump’s case against impeachment. Trump’s defense team demonstrated that the lawbreakers planned the Capitol attack for months, having nothing to do with Trump Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse.
Trying a new line of litigation against Trump using the obsolete 1871 KKK Act is bound to fail, because it wasn’t a white supremacist rally. “Inciting a riot, or attempting to interfere with the congressional efforts to ratify the results of the election that are commended by the Constitution, could not conceivably be within the scope of ordinary responsibilities of the president,” said Joseph Seller, Thomson’s attorney. Sellers has a steep mountain to climb because House managers with all their research and preparation couldn’t prove that Trump incited a riot or in any way encouraged his Ellipse audience to break the law. Without proving Trump incited a riot Jan. 6, how can Sellers leap to the KKK Act to prosecute Trump? Unable to prove their case in the Senate, there’s no new evidence to prove that Trump incited a riot or participated in a white supremacist event prohibited under the KKK Act.
