A summons for Donald Trump was formally issued in a $10 million lawsuit recently filed by Sandra Garza, the longtime girlfriend of the late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died very soon after participating in the defense of the Capitol against rampaging Trump supporters in 2021.
A medical examiner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes but acknowledged that other circumstances would have been able to affect his condition. Would he have had the two strokes credited for his death and died from them if not attacked at the Capitol, including with chemical spray? The lawsuit from Garza, who filed the case in her personal capacity and as a stated representative of Sicknick’s estate, also names two Capitol rioters who were involved in attacking Sicknick as defendants and accuses all three of involvement in wrongful death. The available summons issued for Trump formalizes that he must engage with the case or face judgment against him by default.
“Officer Sicknick’s death was a reasonable and foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ intentional words and actions,” the new federal case insists. The lawsuit outlines some of Trump’s personal role in inciting the mob attacking the Capitol, indicating there was a barely if at all avoidable opening for awareness about the likely looming violence when making that incitement, which adds a reasonably concluded intent towards violence into what Trump told his listeners, even if that’s not where his rhetoric strictly ended. He knew what was possible, with testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and contemporaneous texts outlining or strongly suggesting his awareness that day of weapons in the crowd, yet that’s what he pushed towards.
The case also accuses all three defendants of conspiracy to violate civil rights and involvement in a riot, in addition to allegations against the two rioters of common-law assault and Trump of aiding that act. Garza asked for a minimum of $10 million in damages from each defendant. Elsewhere, Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, who served on the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot, noted how the aid Trump provided participants in the Capitol violence continues with his more recent comments about issuing pardons for charged members of the mob if he regains the presidency. He also already pushed for releasing all those detained in connection to the riot. Going forward, the ex-president is also facing other civil litigation over his role in the riot from officers serving that day.
