Washington:
A senior Democratic congressman sued former president Donald Trump Tuesday, accusing him of violating the 19th century “Ku Klux Klan Act” by supporting the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Bennie Thompson accused Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers of violating the 1871 act by supporting efforts to cease Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the new US president.
Thompson, who is Black and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, cited a law initially developed to shield the rights of African Americans right after the Civil War and the finish of slavery.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington two days right after Trump was acquitted of supporting insurrection in an impeachment trial in the Senate.
While a majority of the Senate, 57 of the one hundred members, voted for conviction, it fell quick of the two-thirds majority essential.
The act was developed to give the US president powers to oppose violently racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan which sprung up in the wake of the 1861-65 Civil War to oppose equal rights for Black Americans.
One seldom-invoked clause of the act, 1875, forbids conspiracy to obstruct federal officeholders from performing their jobs.
Thompson alleged that Trump, Giuliani and the two groups conspired “by force, intimidation and threats” to protect against him from discharging his official duty to carry out the certification of Biden’s election win.
“The defendants acted in concert to incite and then carry out a riot at the Capitol by promoting an assembly of persons to engage in tumultuous and violent conduct or the threat of it that created grave danger of harm to the Plaintiff and to other Members of Congress,” he mentioned.
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