Despite his recent acquittal during a second impeachment trial in front of the Senate, it seems that there is still some trouble awaiting Donald Trump.
First, there’s the coming congressional investigation into the events of January 6th, that the Democrats will almost certainly use to paint a picture of some ingenious Trump, pulling the strings behind the scenes. They’ll foolishly play him up as some Machiavellian mastermind during that probe, even after having spent the last 5 years attempting to convince the world that Donny was a dunce.
They’ll say anything to get their way, after all.
Now, in addition to Trump’s probable congressional tarnishing off over the horizon, it seems as though he’ll be forced to endure a little guff from the NAACP as well.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and the NAACP are suing former President Donald Trump and his longtime ally Rudy Giuliani for allegedly conspiring with a pair of hate groups to storm the U.S. Capitol and block the Electoral College count in January. And they’re using a 150-year-old law as the basis of the suit.
Thompson and the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, allege in the suit, obtained by NBC News, that Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers used “intimidation, harassment, and threats,” to stop the vote count and caused the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in the process. This, they said, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
“I guess it tells you something when you can use a Ku Klux Klan law from the 1870s,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University. “It’s part of a series of laws enacted after the Civil War. Everything old is, unfortunately, new again.”
So, how would this particular law apply?
The statute was first passed following the Civil War to combat KKK violence and allow Black people to take action against hate groups who use “force, intimidation, or threat” to prevent leaders from doing the duties of their office, Levin explained. Particularly, it prohibits people from using violence and conspiracies to keep Congress members from doing their jobs. The law was passed at a time when the KKK was openly, violently terrorizing Black people and Congress members while seeking to block Reconstruction-era reforms for Black people in the South.
“Thompson has standing because they interfered directly with him working to certify the election,” Levin said.
The Trump team was defiant, however, stating plainly that then-President Donald Trump had “no part” in organizing or provoking the violence that occurred.
