Lee v. Trump

[Decided March 31, 2026, by Judge Amit P. Mehta, United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Lee v. Trump, No. 21-cv-00400 (APM), consolidated with seven member cases — 21-cv-00586 (Swalwell), 21-cv-00858 (Blassingame), 21-cv-02265 (Smith), 22-cv-00010, 22-cv-00011, 22-cv-00034, and 23-cv-00038 (Garza). Reported at 2026 WL 880161. Secondary sources give the date as March 30; the signature block and the docket both read March 31.]

[There is no line-up to read, and that is itself worth a moment. This is one district judge, writing alone, with no concurrence and no dissent. Everything you have read in this module — Nixon v. Fitzgerald, Clinton v. Jones — came to you as a decision of the Supreme Court. This is what the doctrine looks like at the point of contact, applied to a summary-judgment record by the judge who has lived with the case since February 2021.]

[Posture, and a warning. This is an INTERLOCUTORY ruling on three motions: the President’s motion for summary judgment on official-acts immunity, his motion to reconsider the First Amendment ruling, and the plaintiffs’ motion to strike the United States’ Westfall Act certification. It is not a final judgment and it decides nothing about liability. It is now on appeal to the D.C. Circuit — Nos. 26-7049, 26-7052, 26-7123 and 26-7154, consolidated — with argument directed to be scheduled for the first appropriate date in January 2027, and the district court proceedings are stayed. The D.C. Circuit may decide this case during the semester. Check before you rely on it.]

[Procedural history in one paragraph. Suits were filed in February 2021 by members of Congress and by Capitol Police officers. In February 2022 Judge Mehta denied the President’s motion to dismiss, holding that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged conduct outside the outer perimeter of his official responsibility and that the Ellipse Speech was plausibly unprotected incitement. Thompson v. Trump, 590 F. Supp. 3d 46 (D.D.C. 2022). The D.C. Circuit affirmed and remanded for an immunity determination at summary judgment, Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F.4th 1 (D.C. Cir. 2023), and the President did not seek certiorari. Seven months after Blassingame, the Supreme Court decided Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024). Nearly a year of immunity discovery followed. This opinion is the result.]

[A note on citation. The slip opinion runs 79 pages and carries no reporter pagination — only a Westlaw cite, 2026 WL 880161. This reading therefore carries no page anchors, and none has been invented. The opinion’s own Part structure is preserved below, with omitted passages summarized in brackets and cuts within a paragraph marked […], so cite by Part (“Part III–A–2–c”) or to the slip opinion’s pagination if you have the PDF. Cases the opinion cites are given as it gives them.]

[What to watch for. First, the question is WHEN, not WHETHER. Blassingame’s test asks whether an act “can reasonably be understood as the official actions of an office-holder rather than the unofficial actions of an office-seeker.” That is a status question answered by context, and Part II–A is the best short restatement of it in the books. Notice the burden: the President must prove his immunity, and Blassingame holds there is no “President-specific exception” to that general rule.

Second, does Trump v. United States change the framework? The President argued it “modified, if not inverted” Blassingame, so that content rather than context drives the inquiry. Part II–C–1 is the court’s answer and the single most teachable passage in the opinion: “This court declines to veer from the Blassingame framework. For one, it cannot do so.” And then the doctrinal claim: “Context, not content, drove the Court’s analysis.” Whether that reading of Trump is right is exactly what the D.C. Circuit will decide.

Third, the tiers do not travel. Trump v. United States built a three-tier structure for CRIMINAL immunity — absolute for the exclusive constitutional sphere, at least presumptive for the outer perimeter, none for unofficial acts. Search Part III of this opinion for that middle tier and you will not find it. “Presumptive immunity” and “conclusive and preclusive” appear only in Part II, where the court is describing Trump. The civil analysis runs on Blassingame’s tie-breaker instead: if the inquiry “yields no sufficiently clear answer in either direction, the President … should be afforded immunity.”

Fourth, what this case does NOT say. It never mentions impeachment, never engages Clinton v. Jones’s holding on deferring civil suits against a sitting President, and never construes Nixon v. Fitzgerald on its own terms. Note 7 asks why.

Fifth, the pairs. Two contacts with state legislators, the same week, opposite results: the Oval Office meeting with the Michigan Senate Majority Leader and Speaker is immune; the call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger is not. Two tweets on January 6 are immune while nearly every other tweet from the same account is not. Nothing in the content distinguishes them. Everything in the context does. Those pairs are the whole case.] I. INTRODUCTION

These consolidated civil cases are among the last vestiges of litigation concerning the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. In February 2022, this court denied President Donald J. Trump’s motion to dismiss, ruling that Plaintiffs had plausibly alleged that President Trump’s acts leading up to and on January 6, including his rally speech on the Ellipse (“Ellipse Speech” or “Speech”), were not official acts and therefore he did not enjoy presidential immunity from suit. See Thompson v. Trump, 590 F. Supp. 3d 46, 73–84 (D.D.C. 2022). The court also held that words spoken during the Ellipse Speech plausibly amounted to incitement and were not protected under the First Amendment. See id. at 108–18.

[Omitted: the history of the interlocutory appeal in Blassingame, and a year of immunity discovery. President Trump also asked the court to reconsider its 2022 ruling that the Ellipse Speech was plausibly unprotected incitement, in light of Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66 (2023), or to certify that question for interlocutory review. That motion is summarized in Part IV below.]

And the Department of Justice has joined the fray. More than four years after the first of these suits was brought, the Department filed a Westfall Act Certification (“Certification”) signed by the Attorney General’s designee. The Certification asserts that the acts by President Trump alleged in the various complaints fell within the scope of his employment as President of the United States. Under the Westfall Act, the Attorney General’s act of certification requires that the United States be substituted as the defendant for tort claims brought against a federal employee. The consequence of substitution in this case would be two-fold. It would immunize President Trump from tort liability because he could no longer be held personally responsible. And it would require dismissal of the tort claims altogether, as no Plaintiff filed pre-suit notice as required under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Plaintiffs have moved to strike the Certification. If granted, the United States would not be substituted as the defendant and the tort claims against President Trump would remain intact.

For the reasons set forth below, the court rules as follows: (1) President Trump’s summary judgment motion with respect to official-acts immunity is denied except as to certain conduct that falls within the outer perimeter of a President’s responsibilities; (2) President Trump’s motion for reconsideration is denied, but the court certifies its First Amendment rulings for interlocutory review; and (3) Plaintiffs’ motion to strike the United States’ Westfall Act Certification is granted. Further, to the extent the court has relied on evidence covered by the two evidentiary motions, the court (4) grants Plaintiffs’ motion requesting judicial notice and (5) denies Defendant’s motion objecting to the court’s consideration of the final report of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

[Omitted: the court’s road map, and its statement that it presumes familiarity with the facts set out in Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 6–12, and Thompson, 590 F. Supp. 3d at 63–69.]

II. LEGAL PRINCIPLES

A. Blassingame v. Trump

A unanimous panel in Blassingame concluded that, on a motion to dismiss, President Trump had not “demonstrated an entitlement to official-acts immunity for his actions leading up to and on January 6 as alleged in the complaints.” 87 F.4th at 5. In so holding, the court began by distilling three “governing principles” from the Supreme Court’s two major cases on presidential immunity from civil suit, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982), and Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997). “First, the President is entitled to official immunity from civil damages liability based on actions within the ‘outer perimeter’ of official presidential responsibility, including discretionary acts within the concept of duty associated with the presidency.” Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 14. “[A]n act lies within the outer perimeter of an official’s duties if it is ‘the kind of act not manifestly or palpably beyond [the official’s] authority, but rather having more or less connection with the general matters committed by law to his control or supervision.’” Id. at 13 (second alteration in original) (quoting Martin v. D.C. Metro. Police Dep’t, 812 F.2d 1425, 1429 (D.C. Cir. 1987)). “Second, the President is subject to civil damages suits based on actions taken in an unofficial, private capacity to the same extent as any private citizen.” Id. at 14. “And third, the President’s actions do not fall beyond the outer perimeter of official responsibility merely because they are unlawful or taken for a forbidden purpose. Rather, the President’s official immunity insulates all of his official actions from civil damages liability, regardless of their legality or his motives.” Id.

With these three principles in mind, the Blassingame court rejected President Trump’s assertions that his alleged conduct fell within the outer perimeter of his official duties “because they amounted to speech on matters of public concern” and because “they came within his constitutional duty under the Take Care Clause.” Id. […] But merely speaking on a matter of public concern is not, by itself, enough to enjoy official-acts immunity. Context matters. As the court explained, “an immunity for all presidential speech on matters of public concern—without regard to the context in which the President speaks—would be grounded purely in ‘the identity of the actor who performed it’ rather than ‘the nature of the function performed,’” “a result that is ‘unsupported by precedent.’” Id. at 16 (quoting Clinton, 520 U.S. at 695). The critical contextual question in this case, the court observed, is whether “the President is speaking (or engaging in conduct) in an official capacity as office-holder or instead in an unofficial capacity as office-seeker.” Id. at 19. […] “Campaigning to attain [the Office of the President] … is not an official function of the office.” Id. An incumbent President engaged in “campaign-related activity” therefore is acting beyond the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities and is not entitled to absolute immunity from civil damages. See id. at 18–19 (offering as examples of non-official acts a nomination acceptance speech at a party convention, the running of a “campaign ad fully funded by a candidate’s campaign,” and a “speech at a reelection campaign rally”).

[Omitted: Blassingame’s rejection of the Take Care Clause argument, which, “at least without more, assumes the answer to the question whether he acted in an official capacity as office-holder or in a private capacity as office-seeker.” 87 F.4th at 24. A President could urge Congress to do its duty under the Electoral Count Act in a State of the Union address or in a campaign ad; only the first would arguably carry out his Take Care Clause responsibilities.]

Importantly, the panel offered guidance on how to distinguish the acts of an incumbent President as “office-holder” from those as “office-seeker.” Context, not motive, is the key consideration. […] “That context may be substantially informed by the way in which the President and the executive branch themselves treat the activity in question.” Id. at 21. Put succinctly, if an act is “clothed in the trappings of an official function based on objective indicia, it more likely constitutes an official act for immunity purposes than if it bears the hallmarks of re-election campaign activity.” Id. Relevant “objective indicia” include whether “an activity is organized and promoted by official White House channels and government officials and funded with public resources.” Id. […] “But the crux of the inquiry … concerns the context in which the President speaks, not what precisely he says or whether it might advance his re-election prospects.” Id.

The court also defined the applicable burden and standard of proof. The President “bears the burden of establishing that he is entitled to official-act immunity.” Id. at 30. “[T]hat burden will be met if, based on an appropriately objective, context-specific assessment, his alleged actions can reasonably be understood as the official actions of an office-holder rather than the unofficial actions of an office-seeker.” Id. But “when a President’s actions viewed objectively and in context may reasonably be understood only as re-election campaign activity, a court not only may, but must deny immunity.” Id. at 21–22. And if it is a close call, doubts are resolved in favor of the President. See id. at 21 (“When an appropriately objective, context-specific assessment yields no sufficiently clear answer in either direction, the President … should be afforded immunity.”).

[Omitted: Blassingame’s illustration, the President’s July 4, 2019 “Salute to America” remarks on the National Mall — publicly funded, promoted through official channels, organized by White House and Interior Department officials, attended by government officials, and posted on the White House website — and its holding that the complaints’ allegations, unrebutted by any showing of official context, survived dismissal. The case was remanded for an immunity determination at summary judgment.]

B. Trump v. United States

Seven months after Blassingame, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. United States. That decision addressed whether a former President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to encompass official acts while in office. 603 U.S. at 605–06. That case, like this one, involved President Trump’s conduct leading up to and on January 6. See id. at 602–03.

The Court held that “the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.” Id. at 606. The Court identified the degree of immunity afforded to three categories of conduct. At one end are activities “within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” for which “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution.” Id. at 609. The Court identified as examples the President’s authority to pardon, remove inferior officers, and recognize foreign countries. Id. at 608–09. At the other are unofficial acts for which “there is no immunity.” Id. at 615. And then there is the wide gulf in between. For conduct in that category, the President enjoys “at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for … acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” Id. at 614. Such presumptive immunity “is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution.” Id. That presumption can be overcome if “the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no ‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’” Id. at 615 (quoting Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 754).

As the D.C. Circuit did in Blassingame, the Court offered guidance on how to distinguish official acts from unofficial ones. The inquiry “begins with assessing the President’s authority to take [the] action” in dispute. Id. at 617. The Court there simply acknowledged the expansive array of conduct that fits within the “outer perimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities. See id. at 617–18. The court next emphasized that the President’s motives and the alleged illegality of the conduct are not relevant to the inquiry. Id. at 618–19. And finally, for actions that “cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular Presidential function,” the “necessary analysis is … fact specific.” Id. at 628. […] That includes Presidential speech. “[M]ost of a President’s public communications,” the Court said, “are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.” Id. at 629. But there may be “contexts in which the President, notwithstanding the prominence of his position, speaks in an unofficial capacity—perhaps as a candidate for office or party leader.” Id. Where there is ambiguity as to speech, an “objective analysis of ‘content, form, and context’ will necessarily inform the inquiry.” Id. (quoting Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 453 (2011)).

[Omitted: the Supreme Court’s classification of particular allegations in the indictment. It held the President’s discussions with Justice Department officials absolutely immune and his conversations with the Vice President about the certification presumptively immune, and it left the remaining allegations — contacts with state officials, the tweets, and the Ellipse Speech — to a “fact specific” inquiry in the district court. 603 U.S. at 619–30.]

C. Official-Acts Immunity Legal Framework

1. Whether Trump Alters the Blassingame Immunity Framework

Recall that Blassingame requires the court to undertake an “objective, context-specific assessment” to determine whether the President is acting as an office-holder versus office-seeker. Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 30. That inquiry looks primarily to whether the conduct is “clothed in the trappings of an official function based on objective indicia.” Id. at 21 […] The content of speech, while sometimes relevant, plays a secondary role. […] “But the crux of the inquiry … concerns the context in which the President speaks, not precisely what he says or whether it might advance his re-election prospects.” Id.

President Trump argues that the Supreme Court in Trump modified, if not inverted, this approach. According to him, under Trump, “content needs to drive the analysis,” not context. […] President Trump sees the Supreme Court making this subtle but important paradigm shift when it concluded that “the President’s communications to the Attorney General and to the Vice President were exercises of fundamental Article II power.” […] The Court’s complete embrace of the bully pulpit power, he maintains, cannot be squared with Blassingame’s office-holder/office-seeker distinction. Id. at 16:5-8.

This court declines to veer from the Blassingame framework. For one, it cannot do so. This court is bound by D.C. Circuit precedent unless “intervening Supreme Court authority … ‘effectively overrule[s], i.e., eviscerate[s], the law of our circuit.’” Alpine Sec. Corp. v. FINRA, 121 F.4th 1314, 1334 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (citation omitted). Trump does not overrule—effectively or otherwise—Blassingame. And it does not “clearly dictate a departure from circuit law.” Bahlul v. United States, 77 F.4th 918, 926 (D.C. Cir. 2023). Blassingame therefore must mark the way for this court’s analysis.

For another, President Trump’s argument is based on a strained reading of Trump. It is true that the Court found him absolutely immune from prosecution for his discussions with the Department of Justice and presumptively immune for his conversations allegedly pressuring the Vice President. Trump, 603 U.S. at 619–24. Such conduct easily fell within the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities. See id. But that conclusion rested less on the content of the President’s speech than on the fact that the acts in question indisputably were of an official character based on the actors involved and the actors’ prescribed constitutional duties—in other words, contextual factors. The Court explained as to President Trump’s interactions with Department of Justice officials that “[i]nvestigative and prosecutorial decisionmaking is ‘the special province of the Executive Branch.’” Id. at 620 (quoting Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 832 (1985)). The same was true of the President’s alleged threat to remove the Attorney General, which the Court said “implicates ‘conclusive and preclusive’ Presidential authority.” Id. at 620– 21. And as to his “conversations” and “discussions” with the Vice President, the Court’s reasoning rested largely on the singularity of the Vice President as “one of the President’s closest advisers” and “[a]s the President’s second in command.” Id. at 621–23. That special relationship was enough for the Court to conclude that “[w]henever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct.” Id. at 623. Context, not content, drove the Court’s analysis.

Nor did the Court place the President’s exercise of the bully pulpit on the same footing as acts “within the scope of his exclusive authority.” Id. at 608. Like the D.C. Circuit in Blassingame, the Court acknowledged that “most of a President’s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.” Id. at 629 (emphasis added); […] But the Court recognized that there may “be contexts in which the President, notwithstanding the prominence of his position, speaks in an unofficial capacity—perhaps as a candidate for office or party leader.” Trump, 603 U.S. at 629. When such uncertainty is present, courts must perform an “objective analysis” that is “fact specific” and informed by “‘content, form, and context.’” Id. (quoting Snyder, 562 U.S. at 453). In this court’s view, there is no daylight between that formulation and the “objective, context-specific assessment” required by Blassingame.

The court’s analysis of the factual record therefore will proceed using the metes and bounds drawn in Blassingame, informed by the Supreme Court’s conclusions and reasoning in Trump.

2. The Parties’ Disputes Over Blassingame’s Application

[Omitted: the parties’ competing accounts of the standard. The President argued that Blassingame sets “only a very low bar,” so that he wins unless it is “absolutely clear” that his actions cannot be understood as official. The court holds that the President bears a burden of proof, not merely of production, and that the ordinary summary-judgment standard of Rule 56 applies.]

Put differently, the court must ask, “[I]s it reasonable to think”—based on an undisputed set of material facts— that President Trump “was exercising his official responsibilities as President, or was he instead engaging in reelection campaign activity as a presidential candidate?” Id. If the inquiry “yields no sufficiently clear answer in either direction, the President … should be afforded immunity.” Id. at 21. But if the record shows that the conduct “may reasonably be understood only as re-election campaign activity, a court not only may, but must deny immunity.” Id. at 21–22. So, although Plaintiffs are correct that “[t]he touchstone of the inquiry is reasonableness,” Pls.’ SJ Opp’n at 12, if the President shows on an undisputed factual record that one reasonable construction of his conduct is official—it need not be the only or best one—he is entitled to immunity for such acts.

[Omitted: the court’s instruction that it must classify each alleged act, not the complaints as a whole, and its holding that Blassingame’s phrase “manifestly or palpably beyond [the official’s] authority” describes an act “bearing no reasonable nexus to the duties and responsibilities of the office,” not “an insuperable barrier.”]

III. OFFICIAL-ACTS IMMUNITY

Now, the merits. The court addresses the arguments in the order in which they appear in President Trump’s summary judgment brief. First, starting with the Ellipse Speech, the President contends based on content alone that the remarks were official because he was exercising authority under the Constitution’s Recommendations Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, § 3, and speaking on a matter of public interest. […] Only after does he address the contextual evidence, which he asserts also establishes the Speech was official.

A. January 6 Ellipse Speech

1. The Recommendations Clause and Speech on a Matter of Public Interest

President Trump begins his defense of the Ellipse Speech as official by focusing solely on what he said: “the speech, standing alone, demonstrates that [he] is entitled to absolute civil immunity.” Def.’s SJ Mem. at 20. He insists that his remarks on January 6 were an exercise of three Presidential functions: (1) providing information and making recommendations to Congress pursuant to the Recommendations Clause, (2) using the “bully pulpit” to address matters of public concern, and (3) communicating with the Vice President about his official duties as the presiding officer of the Joint Session of Congress. Id. at 7–20. The court describes each argument in greater detail before explaining why each fails.

[Omitted: the three arguments in detail. The President argued that the Speech gave Congress “Information of the State of the Union” and recommended “Measures” under the Recommendations Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, § 3; that it was a use of the bully pulpit on the most pressing public question of the day; and that its calls on Vice President Pence were official communications with the Vice President of the kind Trump held presumptively immune.]

These lead contentions share a common defect: they rely solely on the content of the President’s Ellipse Speech. For that reason alone, the court rejects them. The D.C. Circuit in Blassingame was clear that whether the Ellipse Speech was an official act must be determined from an “objective, context-specific assessment.” See 87 F.4th at 30 (discussing allegations relating to the January 6 rally). The Speech’s content is not “off-limits,” but “the crux of the inquiry … concerns the context in which the President speaks, not what precisely he says or whether it might advance his re-election prospects.” Id. at 22. President Trump’s singular focus on the content of the Ellipse Speech disregards Blassingame’s clear instruction. And as discussed, nothing in Trump altered the context-driven nature of the inquiry.

President Trump’s Recommendations Clause and bully pulpit arguments also cannot be squared with Blassingame for additional reasons. The latter is foreclosed: President Trump made that same assertion about the bully pulpit before the D.C. Circuit—i.e., when the President speaks on a matter of public concern, he enjoys official-acts immunity—and the court rejected it. Id. at 14–16. The decision in Trump did not disturb that holding. See 603 U.S. at 629. […] An incumbent President seeking re-election could offer recommendations to Congress during the State of the Union and then make the very same recommendations the next day at a campaign rally. See id. Only by looking at context can a court determine whether the remarks are official or unofficial.

The court is also guided by the Supreme Court’s view of the Ellipse Speech. The indictment against President Trump alleged that he falsely asserted during the Speech “that certain States wanted to recertify their electoral votes and that the Vice President had the power to send those States’ ballots back for recertification.” Trump, 603 U.S. at 628 (citing Indictment, United States v. Trump, No. 23-cr-257-TSC (D.D.C.), ECF No. 1 [hereinafter Indictment], ¶¶ 103–104). The Court did not declare the Ellipse Speech an official act based on that allegation alone. Id. at 628–30. Rather, it said that its status may depend on a “factbound analysis” of its “content, form, and context” and left it to the district court to make that determination in the first instance. Id. at 629–30. If the Supreme Court did not view the President’s reference to the Vice President’s purported “power” as rendering the Ellipse Speech categorically official, this court will not either.

2. Objective, Context-Specific Assessment

The court now turns to do what Blassingame instructed: perform an “appropriately objective, context-specific assessment” of whether the Ellipse Speech “can reasonably be understood as the official actions of an office-holder rather than the unofficial actions of an office-seeker.” Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 30. Because the burden of proof rests on President Trump, the court begins with the evidence adduced by him. There is not much of it. The court then evaluates the proof supplied by Plaintiffs, which requires a longer discussion.

a. President Trump’s evidence

[Parts III–A–2–a and III–A–2–b are omitted; their conclusions are restated in Part III–A–2–c below. The President offered five facts as context: that White House staff vetted the Speech as an official communication; that White House officials helped plan his participation; that the date and place were chosen to affect congressional action; that the Speech urged the Vice President and Congress to act; and that it was nationally televised. The court finds a genuine dispute about the vetting — the internal circulation of the Speech carried no Hatch Act warning of the kind attached to a political speech two days earlier, and what that absence means is disputed — and finds no role for the Executive Branch in choosing the date, place or time, which the private organizer, Women for America First, chose.]

b. Plaintiffs’ evidence

[The plaintiffs offered more than 350 undisputed facts and 185 exhibits. Among them: the Rally was funded entirely by private donations, principally more than $2.1 million from one donor whose family had given over $1.5 million to the re-election effort; the White House did not announce the Rally on its website or official accounts and did not post the Speech afterwards, though it had posted the Salute to America remarks; promotion ran through the Campaign’s channels and the organizer’s; and the only government official among the speakers was Congressman Mo Brooks. The court finds that the Campaign itself played “a modest role” in organizing the Rally, and that most of the organizers were former campaign staff.]

c. Objective, context-specific assessment

With the undisputed facts now set forth—both as presented by President Trump and Plaintiffs—the court assesses whether he has carried his burden to show he is cloaked with official-acts immunity for the Ellipse Speech. He has not.

President Trump does not dispute that he remained an office-seeker up to and on January 6. The President’s appearance at the Save America Rally, consistent with that status, involved almost no “trappings of an official function.” No public funds were used to put on or promote the event. The White House did not tout the Ellipse Speech through its official website or social media channels beforehand, and it did not publish the President’s remarks afterwards. Nor did any executive branch agency. Further, the White House played no meaningful role in organizing or planning the Rally. The only material assistance was to send a single email to the Secretary of the Interior to secure a stage-location waiver from the National Park Service. Nothing more. The speaker line-up included only one other public official, Congressman Mo Brooks, and there is no evidence of attendance by any other government official. In Blassingame, the D.C. Circuit observed that the White House’s involvement in planning, funding, and promoting the Salute to America event and attendance by multiple government officials “strongly suggest” that the President’s speech was “part of an official event.” 87 F.4th at 22–23. Those considerations are entirely missing here.

The opposite is true of private interests closely aligned with President Trump’s re-election efforts. WAF was an entity dedicated to advancing policies that aligned with the President’s agenda. WAF conceived of the Rally, led its organization and planning, secured the permit, and promoted it in various ways. […] The Rally’s expenses—over $2.1 million—were largely underwritten by one private donor. That donor and her family contributed over $1.5 million to the President’s re-election efforts. […] In fact, on January 4, the President met with Pierson, still a senior campaign advisor only four days prior, in the White House to discuss the Rally’s production elements and speaker list. She—not White House officials—communicated the President’s wishes back to Rally organizers. […] These objective considerations all point towards classifying the President’s participation in the Save America Rally as an unofficial act of an office-seeker.

[Omitted: the court’s answers to three further arguments — that the Campaign did not run the Rally, that a speech at an event that was not fully campaign-sponsored must therefore be official, and that Presidents often act officially at private events such as the National Prayer Breakfast. On the last, the court says that calling the Rally “a private event” does not resolve the question, which “remains whether at the private event the President is acting as the incumbent office-holder or a candidate for re-election.”]

Before moving on, the court returns to where it began its discussion of the Ellipse Speech: its content. Its content “confirms” what the court’s “objective assessment of the context makes evident”: President Trump has not shown that the Speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. See Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 22. The court provided a lengthy summary of the Speech in Thompson, see 590 F. Supp. 3d at 113–14, and does not repeat it here. For present purposes, it suffices to quote what the court previously held:

[W]hile the Speech did touch on matters of public concern (namely President Trump’s pledge to work on election laws in a second term), the main thrust of the Speech was not focused on policy or legislation. It was to complain about perceived cases of election fraud that led President-elect Biden to win more votes in closely contested states, to urge members of Congress to object to certain state certifications, and to exhort the Vice President to return those certifications to those states to be recertified. Much like the tweets leading up to the January 6 Rally, the words spoken by the President—without delving into the motivation behind them— reflect an electoral purpose, not speech in furtherance of any official duty.

Id. at 83.

B. President Trump’s Outreach to State and Local Officials

[Omitted: the plaintiffs’ contention that the President “tried to persuade state and local officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia to use their offices to change the declared results,” the President’s one-page argument and its single item of evidence, and the list of seven contacts the plaintiffs proved: calls to Pennsylvania legislators in November and December 2020; a call to two Republican members of the Wayne County, Michigan, Board of Canvassers; a call to the Michigan Senate Majority Leader and House Speaker on November 18, 2020, and an Oval Office meeting with them on November 20; a call to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in December; and the call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021. For all but two, the record contains no contextual facts in the President’s favor.]

That leaves the Oval Office meeting with Michigan state legislators on November 20, 2020, and the call to Raffensperger on January 2, 2021. As to the former, Blassingame compels its recognition as an official act. The sole contextual fact offered is that the meeting took place in the Oval Office. Def.’s CounterStmt. at 134 ¶ 85. That is a trapping of the Office. See Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 32–33 (Katsas, J., concurring). True, President Trump purportedly told Shirkey and Chatfield to “have some backbone and do the right thing,” Def.’s CounterStmt. at 134 ¶ 85, but that content is a secondary consideration, see Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 22, and can reasonably be construed as official or unofficial, see Trump, 603 U.S. at 626–28. As here, when a “context-specific assessment yields no sufficiently clear answer in either direction,” the President must be afforded immunity. Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 21. President Trump enjoys presidential immunity as to the November 20, 2020 meeting in the Oval Office with Michigan state legislators.

The call to Raffensperger, on the other hand, can only reasonably be viewed as the act of an office-seeker. President Trump highlights that his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was on the call. But the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that Meadows was not acting in an official capacity when speaking to Raffensperger. See State v. Meadows, 88 F.4th 1331, 1349 (11th Cir. 2023). “Meadows’s participation in the call reflected a clear attempt to further Trump’s private litigation interests: he urged the participants to ‘find[] a path forward that’s less litigious.’” Id. (alteration in original) (emphasis added). This court agrees. The other three participants with the President were all “attorneys for the Trump Campaign, Cleta Mitchell, Kurt Hilbert, and Alex Kaufman.” Def.’s CounterStmt. at 142 ¶ 91. That context renders the only reasonable understanding of that communication to be re-election activity. And content confirms that conclusion. President Trump told the Georgia Secretary of State, among other things, “And the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000. We need less than 2,000.” Id. at 146 ¶ 93. And he continued, “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes… . Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.” Id. at 148 ¶ 94. Also, during the call, the President said to his Campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell, “[A]ll we have to do Cleta is find 11,000-plus votes.” Id. at 149 ¶ 95. These are the words of an office-seeker imploring a state official to alter the outcome of Georgia’s election, not those of an incumbent President acting in his official capacity.

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In sum, President Trump has not carried his burden to prove that his various communications with state and local officials, except one, were official acts entitled to immunity. He offered no meaningful evidence of his own on the subject, and Plaintiffs’ evidence largely establishes that these acts can only be reasonably construed as those of an office-seeker. The sole exception is the Oval Office meeting with Michigan state legislators. As to that act, the sole contextual fact on this record—its location—counsels in favor of construing it as falling within the outer perimeter of the President’s official duties.

C. The Twitter Account

Next up are various tweets sent from President Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. The court counts more than 35 of them. President Trump has described this Twitter account as “personal” or “private” in various judicial fora, including before the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Def.’s CounterStmt. at 17–22 ¶¶ 12–15, 23 ¶ 17. Those admissions are relevant, see Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 15–16, but not dispositive. […] In Trump, the Court said that “[w]hether the Tweets … involve official conduct may depend on the content and context of each.” 603 U.S. at 630 (emphasis added). Among the contextual facts the Court identified as bearing on the issue are “what else was said contemporaneous to the excerpted communications” and “who was involved in transmitting the electronic communications.” Id. Notably, the Court seemed to contemplate that the trial court’s task would not be to decide whether tweeting was categorically an official act, but to make that inquiry on a tweet-by-tweet basis. See id.

[Omitted: the President’s evidence about the account. He offered no evidence about any particular tweet — who drafted it, who transmitted it, what else was said at the time. The one relevant fact, that he ran the account with the help of the White House Social Media Director, “is not specific to any of the dozens of tweets identified by Plaintiffs.”]

President Trump bears the burden to show, through contextual evidence, that a particular tweet can reasonably be construed as official conduct. Because he has essentially offered no such evidence, he has not carried his burden as to any tweet.

[Omitted: the court’s list of tweets that are plainly those of an office-seeker — the announcement of his candidacy, commentary on the results, steps to challenge them, and urging of state officials to act.]

President Trump’s “contemporaneous” tweets on January 5 and 6, see Trump, 603 U.S. at 630, about what the Vice President needed to do during the Joint Session also were unofficial. “The presidency itself has no institutional interest in who will occupy the office next… . Rather, an incumbent President’s interests in winning re-election have the same purely private character as those of his challenger—i.e., ‘substantial personal interests as a candidate’ to attain (or retain) the office.” Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 17. The January 5 and 6 tweets are those of a candidate trying to retain office: “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,” Def.’s CounterStmt. at 59 ¶ 45; “All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN,” id. at 62 ¶ 47; and “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency,” id. at 62 ¶ 49.Those are the words of a candidate conveying a personal interest in re-election. That the Campaign issued a similar statement on January 5 confirms their unofficial nature. See id. at 60 ¶ 46 (“The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”). 23

[Omitted: tweets promoting the Rally, which fall with the Speech, and tweets whose content alone is harder to classify, as to which the President again offered no context.]

D. Tweets After the Riot at the U.S. Capitol Began

That leaves the two tweets sent from @realDonaldTrump after the riot at the Capitol began. See id. at 455 ¶ 349, 457 ¶ 351. Neither side has offered specific facts to establish their circumstances. The Select Committee’s final report, which is in the record, helps fill the gaps. See Def.’s SJ Obj., Ex. W, ECF No. 173-24.

According to the Select Committee, the President learned of the riot at the Capitol around 1:21 p.m. after he returned to the White House from the Ellipse. See id. at 592. He then went to the White House dining room and remained there until early evening, leaving only to film a video in the Rose Garden urging his supporters to disperse. See id. at 593. After rioters broke into the Capitol at 2:13 p.m., the President’s advisors urged him to make a public statement. See id. at 595–96. The first tweet during the riot came at 2:24 p.m. Def.’s CounterStmt. at 455 ¶ 349. It said that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Id. The second tweet came at 6:01 p.m. Id. at 457 ¶ 351. That tweet expressed solidarity with his supporters and told them, “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Id. Between these two tweets, President Trump made and publicly released the Rose Garden video, in which he expressed sympathy for his supporters and then signed off, saying, “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order… . So go home. We love you, you’re very special… . I know how you feel. But go home, and go home in peace.” Id. at 456 ¶ 350.

These communications, based on context alone, fall within the outer perimeter of President Trump’s official responsibilities. The President was at the White House at the time; he was acting (or not) on the advice of White House advisors; and at least as to his Rose Garden remarks, he prepared them with the assistance of White House staff who presumably used a government-issued recording device. Plaintiffs may view President Trump’s efforts to quell the violence at the Capitol as inadequate and even as a complete dereliction of duty. But they reasonably can be construed as the acts of an office-holder and therefore are cloaked in official-acts immunity. Plaintiffs cannot use these two tweets and the Rose Garden video to make their case.

E. Miscellaneous Activities

[Part III–E is omitted: the category-by-category treatment of campaign-rally statements, post-election remarks, campaign tweets, the election lawsuits, and the fake-elector scheme — none of which the President supported with contextual evidence. The court also holds, following Trump, 603 U.S. at 621, that the President’s discussions with Justice Department officials are official acts for which he cannot be held liable.]

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Before turning to the next motion, the court briefly summarizes its immunity determinations. Based on the present record of facts not in dispute, with limited exceptions, President Trump has not carried his burden to demonstrate, through “objective, context-specific” evidence, that the acts alleged by Plaintiffs “can reasonably be understood as the official actions of an office-holder rather than the unofficial actions of an office-seeker.” Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 30. President Trump is not immune from suit for that conduct. That includes the Ellipse Speech, most of his contacts with state and local officials, nearly all tweets from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, and various other miscellaneous activities. The exceptions include: his Oval Office meeting with Michigan state legislators, the tweets from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account at 2:24 p.m. and 6:01 p.m. on January 6, his Rose Garden remarks on January 6, and his interactions with officials from the Department of Justice. These are official acts for which President Trump cannot be held liable. Plaintiffs therefore cannot rely on them to prove their claims.

To be clear, the court’s decision today is not a final pronouncement on immunity for any particular act. It is a ruling based on the record evidence and application of the summary judgment standard. President Trump remains free to reassert official-acts immunity as a defense at trial. But the burden will remain his and will be subject to a higher standard of proof. See Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 30 (stating that the party asserting immunity bears the burden “throughout”); id. at 31 (Katsas, J., concurring) (contemplating that Plaintiffs’ allegations as it relates to immunity would need to be “tested on summary judgment or at trial”).

IV. FIRST AMENDMENT DEFENSE

[Parts IV–A through IV–C are omitted. In 2022 the court held that the closing exhortations of the Ellipse Speech were plausibly words of incitement unprotected by the First Amendment under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). The President asked the court to reconsider in light of Counterman v. Colorado. It declines. That material belongs to the First Amendment course. What is kept is the certification, because the certified question is the closest thing this case has to a question presented.]

D. Certification for Interlocutory Review

Although the court declines to reconsider, it will certify its First Amendment rulings—the denials of the motion to dismiss and the motion for reconsideration—for interlocutory review. See 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). The certifiable question is: Have Plaintiffs plausibly alleged that President Trump’s exhortations at the end of the Ellipse Speech—“We fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and “[W]e’re going to try to and give [weak Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country”—moments before directing thousands of followers on an unpermitted march to the Capitol are inciting words that fall outside the protections of the First Amendment?

V. MOTION TO STRIKE WESTFALL ACT CERTIFICATION

[Omitted: the plaintiffs’ argument that the record does not support the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment determination; the Westfall Act’s text and the plaintiffs’ burden in challenging a certification; and the court’s demonstration that official-acts immunity and the District of Columbia’s scope-of-employment test are both “functional” inquiries — both reach conduct with “some relationship or nexus” to the office, and neither reaches conduct with none.]

The court need not decide whether the scope and outer-perimeter inquiries are always co-extensive when it comes to the acts of the President. It is enough to say that, in this case, it is hard to discern any daylight between the two. This follows from the fact that “[t]he presidency itself has no institutional interest in who will occupy the office next.” Id. at 17. “Campaigning to attain that office thus is not an official function of the office.” Id. And importantly, “an incumbent President’s interests in winning re-election have the same purely private character as those of his challengers.” Id. If conduct in pursuit of retaining office is not an “official function” and is of a “purely private character,” then such conduct likewise is neither the kind of act an incumbent President is employed to perform nor one that bears any relationship or nexus with his responsibilities. Put more simply, winning re-election is not a function or outgrowth of the job of an incumbent officeholder; therefore, acts in furtherance of that end fall outside the scope of employment under District of Columbia law.

[Omitted: the court’s answers to four arguments the United States raised against applying Blassingame to the scope question.]

The court therefore strikes the United States’ Westfall Act Certification.

VI. CONCLUSION AND ORDER

For the foregoing reasons, the court rules as follows:

1. President Donald J. Trump’s Motion for Summary Judgment, ECF No. 144, is denied except as to the conduct that the court has determined were official acts;

2. President Donald J. Trump’s Motion to Reconsider Denial of His Motion to Dismiss on First Amendment Grounds, ECF No. 145, is denied, but the court grants the President’s request to certify both the present ruling and the original denial for interlocutory review;

3. Plaintiffs’ Motion to Strike the Government’s Westfall Act Certification, ECF No. 183, is granted;

4. Plaintiffs’ Request for Judicial Notice in Support of Opposition to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment, ECF No. 153, is granted insofar as the court has relied on any facts Plaintiffs have requested be judicially noticed; and

5. President Donald J. Trump’s Objection to Admission of Select Committee Final Report, ECF No. 173, is denied to the extent the court has cited to the Report to establish facts that the court believes can be converted into admissible evidence. Dated: March 31, 2026 Amit P. Mehta

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Notes & Questions

1. Office-holder or office-seeker — a status test, and its price. Blassingame asks which hat the President was wearing, and answers it with “objective, context-specific” evidence: who organized the event, who paid for it, who was invited, where it was promoted, whether a Hatch Act warning accompanied the circulation of the speech. Notice what that test does not ask. It does not ask whether the conduct was lawful — Blassingame’s third principle says immunity covers official acts “regardless of their legality or his motives.” And it does not ask what the President said. State the strongest case for a context test: it keeps courts out of motive-hunting and out of content-based lines. Then state the strongest case against it, which is the President’s own: an incumbent seeking re-election is always both things at once, so a test keyed to which one he “was” being will always come out against him. Which is right?

2. Does Trump v. United States leave Blassingame standing? Part II-C-1 gives two reasons. The first is hierarchical — “it cannot do so,” because a district court does not overrule circuit precedent that the Supreme Court has not overruled. The second is substantive — “Context, not content, drove the Court’s analysis,” and so “there is no daylight” between the two formulations. Test the second reason against Trump itself. The Supreme Court held the discussions with Justice Department officials absolutely immune because of the actors and their constitutional duties; it called the Ellipse Speech and the tweets a “close[r]” question requiring “fact-specific analysis.” Is that context doing the work, or is it content plus the identity of the audience? This is the question the D.C. Circuit has taken the case to answer. Write the two-page argument you would make on each side.

3. The tier that did not travel. Trump gave official acts at the outer perimeter “at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution,” rebuttable only on a showing that applying the law poses “no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” That presumption appears nowhere in Part III of this opinion. Should it? Argue first that a civil damages suit by private plaintiffs is more dangerous to the presidency than a federal prosecution, because it multiplies without any prosecutorial gatekeeper — and then argue that it is less dangerous, because it carries no risk of imprisonment and no possibility of a hostile successor administration. Which argument does Nixon v. Fitzgerald support? Which does Clinton v. Jones?

4. The Michigan/Georgia pair. The Oval Office meeting with the Michigan Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the Michigan House is immune. The call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger is not. Both are contacts with state officials about the 2020 election, weeks apart. Identify every fact the court relies on to separate them. Then ask the uncomfortable question: is the difference doing real work, or is it that the court has a transcript of the Raffensperger call and does not have one of the Michigan meeting? What would the Michigan meeting have to look like, on the record, to come out the other way?

5. Immunity for a dereliction. Part III-D holds the 2:24 p.m. and 6:01 p.m. tweets and the Rose Garden video immune. The court says so in as many words: plaintiffs “may view President Trump’s efforts to quell the violence at the Capitol as inadequate and even as a complete dereliction of duty. But they reasonably can be construed as the acts of an office-holder and therefore are cloaked in official-acts immunity.” That is Blassingame’s third principle applied at its hardest — immunity turns on function, not on adequacy. Is it right that the worse the President performs an official function, the more clearly it is an official function?

6. The Westfall Act and the collapse. Part V holds that the scope-of-employment inquiry under D.C. respondeat superior law and the outer-perimeter inquiry under Blassingame come out the same way here, because “winning re-election is not a function or outgrowth of the job of an incumbent officeholder.” The consequence is that the United States cannot substitute itself as defendant and the suits proceed against Trump personally. Two questions. First, should a federal immunity doctrine and a local tort doctrine collapse into one another that easily? Second, note who filed the certification and when — the Department of Justice, more than four years into the litigation, under the administration of the defendant. What, if anything, should a court make of that?

7. What this case does not say. The module is titled “Immunity from Suit and Impeachment.” The opinion mentions impeachment zero times. It never engages Clinton v. Jones’s holding that a sitting President enjoys no deferral of civil suits on unofficial conduct — even though the defendant is the sitting President and these suits are proceeding against him personally. And it never independently construes Nixon v. Fitzgerald. Ask why. One answer is that the D.C. Circuit already did the doctrinal work in Blassingame and a district court’s job is to apply it. Another is that the office-seeker/office-holder frame has quietly replaced the older separation-of-powers framing, which asked about burdens on the presidency rather than about which role the President occupied. If the second answer is right, something has been lost. What?

8. Posture discipline. Everything above is provisional. The court says so: “the court’s decision today is not a final pronouncement on immunity for any particular act,” and the President “remains free to reassert official-acts immunity as a defense at trial.” The case is stayed and on appeal with argument set for January 2027. Before you cite this opinion for anything, check the D.C. Circuit docket — and notice how much of what you have just read could be undone by a ruling on the single question in note 2.