December 1st, 2023: Court of Appeals rules that Capitol Police officers suit against Trump can go ahead

The decision on December 1, 2023 rejected Trump’s claim that he was acting officially as President, and was thus immune from lawsuit, when he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Update 9/23/2023: Police Officers file their brief in U.S. Court of Appeals opposing Trump’s immunity bid.

On September 23, 2022, Officers Blassingame and Hemby, through their attorneys at the Patrick Malone law firm and the nonprofit Protect Democracy, filed their brief in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The legal filing explains in detail why the appeals court should reject Trump’s bid to avoid accountability for the January 6 insurrection. Trump has appealed the district court’s rejection of his motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Trump contends that as president, he should have “absolute immunity” from this lawsuit arising from injuries suffered by the police officers defending the Capitol in the January 6 riot. The officers’ brief was filed jointly with two groups of members of Congress who have also sued Trump for their injuries on January 6.

1965949-Brief-of-Appellees explains why the Constitution gives no immunity from civil lawsuit to a President who used an angry mob to physically attack a coequal branch of government, Congress, while Congress was exercising a function exclusively assigned to it by the Constitution, the counting of the Electoral College votes from the 2020 election.

As the plaintiffs wrote in their brief: “There is simply no constitutional basis for Trump’s immunity claim. It is inconceivable that he was carrying out any function of the presidency when he directed his supporters to use violence and intimidation to halt the constitutionally prescribed process for counting Electoral College votes. To the contrary, he was doing the very opposite of what our Constitution, and our nation’s two-hundred year history of peaceful transfers of power, demand of a sitting president.”

Trump has one more brief to file in the appeals court, and then the court is likely to hold an oral argument late this year or early next year.

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A laptop and a cardboard box. These two items could be major tools in improving regular folks’ health throughout this year — and beyond — if they get launched on important tasks, pronto. What needs to happen is for patients to be hyperconscious, persistent, and skeptical enough to start gathering vital records about themselves and….

The post Getting and keeping your own medical records: It’s a boon to better health appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

Editor’s note: The blog will shift in ’23 to more episodic publication. Just a reminder: 2023 will begin what could be consequential changes in aspects of older Americans, notably those age 65-plus and covered by Medicare. As part of law of the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in the Congress and pushed by the….

The post For seniors, big changes coming with federal health coverage plans appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

In recent times, one of the issues most complained about by patients comes down to this: Why does my doctor zip through my office visit and fail to give me the attention I need and deserve? To be sure, doctors these days struggle ever more with “efficiency” pushes in medicine by profit-obsessed business interests and….

The post Patients may need to take steps to optimize time with harried doctors appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

Editor’s note: The blog will shift in the days ahead to more episodic publishing. Members of Congress raced at the year’s end to avoid the consequences of a brutal snowstorm battering huge swaths of the country. Before hitting the holiday exits, lawmakers approved a whopping $1.7 trillion bill to fund the federal government through the….

The post Congress races to snowy holiday exit, spending $1.7 trillion on the way out appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

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The post Half of those hurt or killed in crashes used drugs or alcohol appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

Californians have accomplished something that federal regulators have failed to — despite long, difficult campaigning. Voters in the biggest state in the nation not only have banned Big Tobacco from peddling its flavored products that target and exploit communities of color and the young. They also have defeated the industry in its legal challenges. Big….

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Big hospitals and hospital chains have wailed, with considerable justification, since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic about financial damages they have suffered due to costly shortages of desperately needed health staff. But the institutions fostered this staffing crisis, with profit-ravenous suits in executive suites boosting hospital bottom lines in flusher times by slashing one….

The post In hospitals’ struggles with staffing crises, lessons on reaping and sowing appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.

Doctors working in hospital emergency departments face chaos, violence and high stress every day, and usually they get the diagnosis and treatment right. But, and it’s a big but, as often as one in seventeen ER visits ends with a misdiagnosis, which can have deadly consequences. Those medical misdiagnosis are newly estimated by Johns Hopkins….

The post Misdiagnoses lead to 250,000 ER patients’ deaths annually, U.S. study finds appeared first on Patrick Malone Law.