A US court has suspended proceedings against President-elect Donald Trump in connection with the Capitol storming. The decision was made to give the government time to ‘assess the situation’. This was reported by NBC News.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith said that the prosecution had asked the court to cancel the scheduled pre-trial date so that the government could consider this ‘unprecedented situation’.
The court granted the request.
Trump’s lawyers said that the court would be informed of the results of the government’s discussions by 2 December.
The newspaper’s sources say that the Department of Justice began to consider dismissing the case after Trump’s election victory.
It is worth noting that the US Department of Justice’s policy prohibits criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
On 6 January 2021, hundreds of protesters broke through to the Capitol in Washington, D.C., where the US president’s victory was to be confirmed. Sessions of the Senate and House of Representatives were temporarily interrupted, and a lockdown was imposed on the territory of Congress. Later, congressmen resumed the meeting and officially declared Joe Biden the winner of the election.
Five people were killed in the storming, including four protesters and one police officer, and police and protesters were also injured.
The events of 6 January became the basis for Trump’s second impeachment. On 13 January, the House of Representatives voted in favour of impeachment, accusing Trump of ‘inciting an uprising’. This made him the only US president to be impeached twice, but the Senate did not have enough votes to convict.
In July 2024, the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump could claim immunity from prosecution in the case of the Capitol storming:
- payments to a porn star;
- interference in the 2020 elections in Georgia;
- the storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
