The Justice Department asked a federal judge to hit pause on Donald Trump’s Jan. 6th-related civil cases, pushing to halt “all disruptive and untenable discovery directly against the sitting President of the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta recently rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss the case on the immunity grounds, a ruling paving the way for depositions and evidence-sharing in those cases. The Capitol Police officers and lawmakers seeking to hold Trump liable for the insurrection may seek the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials — and potentially, Trump himself.
While appealing the denial of the motion to dismiss, the Trump Justice Department wants to prevent the case from moving toward a trial.
During a Substack Live conversation rounding off a heavy news week, Allison Gill and I discussed why the Jan. 6th cases represent an even more direct reckoning over Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol than the criminal cases against him.
Jack Smith carefully avoided indicting Trump for inciting the insurrection, hoping to avoid unnecessary legal wrangling over the outer boundaries of the First Amendment, but the civil cases tackle that issue head-on.
So far, those lawsuits have survived Trump’s First Amendment challenges.
That’s an important distinction during the week of the Justice Department’s second indictment of James Comey for posting a photograph on social media of seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47,” charges ridiculed by serious legal experts for coming nowhere near the legal threshold for a “true threat.”
In stark contrast to Comey’s beach snapshot, Trump’s speech at the Ellipse of the U.S. Capitol were found to have plausibly met the First Amendment’s tough hurdle for inciting “imminent lawless action.”
Allison and I also discussed a development in the legal challenge of the FBI’s seizure of 2020 presidential election ballots in Fulton County, Ga. County officials have filed what is known as a 41(g) motion seeking the return of the seized ballots.
On Friday, the Trump Justice Department was forced to reveal the backstory of the raid: Trump’s campaign attorney Kurt Olsen, who was sanctioned for his role in the 2020 election subversion efforts, issued his criminal referral on Jan. 5, 2026, the same day that Fulton County filed its motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit also seeking the ballots.
The investigation progressed quickly after that: The supervisor of the FBI agent who signed off on the search warrant opened an assessment one day later, and the raid followed within weeks on Jan. 28.
Fulton County likely will argue that the timeline reveals that the criminal investigation was a gambit designed to end-run the Trump Justice Department’s failing civil litigation to obtain the ballots.
All Rise News will follow developments in both of the cases. Read the Justice Department’s motion to pause the Jan. 6th litigation here, and the new disclosures regarding the timeline of the Fulton County investigation here.
