President Trump can’t be sued for allegedly provoking his supporters to assault protesters at a pre-election rally last March because his standing as president precludes him from civil litigation, one of his attorneys said Friday.
“Mr. Trump is immune from suit because he is President of the United States,” R. Kent Westberry, an attorney for Mr. Trump, wrote in a filing entered Friday in in federal court in Kentucky.
The president’s lawyer offered that defense in response to a lawsuit brought last month on behalf of three individuals who say they were assaulted at a March 2016 campaign rally in Louisville upon Mr. Trump’s instruction.
“Get ’em out of here,” Mr. Trump repeatedly said into the microphone when demonstrators disrupted the rally and that constitutes “explicit directives,” according to the lawsuit, that “could have no other reasonable meaning but to remove protesters, including the Plaintiffs, using unwanted, harmful physical force.”
The legal action brought last month on the protesters’ behalf seeks damages from two Trump supporters accused of assault as well as the president and his White House campaign.
While Mr. Westberry doesn’t dispute Mr. Trump wanted the protesters removed from last year’s event, he offered several explanations in Friday’s filing as to why he believes the lawsuit should be rejected, among them his client’s position as president.
In a separate filing, meanwhile, one of the alleged assailants brought legal action of his own against Mr. Trump on Friday. Alvin Bamberger, a member of the Korean War Veterans Association, was captured on video pushing a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Kashiya Nwanguma, during last year’s rally. According to his own claim, however, “Bamberger would not have acted as he did without Trump and/or the Trump Campaign’s specific urging and inspiration,” his filing reads in part.
“To the extent that Bamberger acted, he did so in response to — and inspired by — Trump and/or the Trump Campaign’s urging to remove the protesters.”
Friday’s legal filings were first reported by Politico.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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