Ten additional Democrats signed onto a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani over concerns regarding the Capitol riot.
The group of lawmakers signed onto the amended complaint Wednesday, nearly two months after Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who sits atop the House Homeland Security Committee, partnered with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll to file the lawsuit in the District Court for the District of Columbia.
TOP HOUSE DEMOCRATS SUE TRUMP AND GIULIANI OVER CAPITOL RIOTS
The members of Congress who joined the suit are Democratic Reps. Steve Cohen, Karen Bass, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Veronica Escobar, Hank Johnson Jr., Marcy Kaptur, Barbara Lee, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Pramila Jayapal.
The suit accused Trump and Giuliani of having “conspired” with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to “incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capital of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation, and threat.”
The former president engaged in a monthslong campaign to overturn the outcome of the election. His campaign and Republican-backed groups filed dozens of lawsuits challenging the voting outcomes in battleground states that went for presidential candidate Joe Biden, none of which resulted in changes. The claims from the president and his orbit ranged from a vote-flipping scheme to foreign interference, also arguing that state legislatures unconstitutionally changed the way elections work in their respective states.
In addition to those claims, Trump took part in a rally on the morning of Jan. 6 in which he urged the thousands of supporters that descended upon Washington, D.C., to hear him speak to march to Congress to express their discontent that they’d be certifying Biden’s victory.
The amended complaint included anecdotes from each member of Congress pertaining to their experiences on Jan. 6. Each lawmaker described how they were in the Capitol at the time that the rioters breached the area and how they felt once they had been evacuating and in hiding, waiting for law enforcement to give them the all-clear.
Cohen, a congressman from Tennessee, recalled developing “difficulties falling and staying asleep … difficulties with his digestion” and that he “became jumpy whenever he heard a loud or unfamiliar noise in his home.” During the riot, he said he began to think about where he’d like his body buried after his death.
Escobar described suffering from “violent nightmares” and said she had sought professional treatment.
Some of the Democrats mentioned hearing the gunshot ring out in the halls of the Capitol that killed Ashli Babbitt while others also referenced having to be confined into tight quarters and feared it could become a coronavirus spreader.
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Trump, who was president at the time, was impeached in the House of Representatives a week after the riot, which was mentioned in the lawsuit. After Trump was out of office, the Senate conducted the trial, which resulted in his acquittal.
Representatives for Giuliani and Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
