(JustPatriots.com)- On Monday, a defense attorney argued in court that the civil lawsuit that was filed by the District of Columbia against the Proud Boys, Oath Leaders as well as 37 individual defendants should fail because it has a lack of standing.
Jonathon Moseley is the attorney who is representing Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Oath Keepers. Earlier this week, he said:
“We don’t think that they have jurisdiction to sue. They don’t have standing to sue on behalf of the individual police officers. They don’t have jurisdiction to sue for what happened on federal land.”
On the first of this month, Karl Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said his office would be expanding the December 2021 lawsuit they filed. The expansion was done to include four individual members of the Oath Keepers, one individual member of the Proud Boys as well as the founder of the Oath Keepers, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III.
The overall lawsuit was seeking to place all the blame of the violence of the events of January 6, 2021, on a conspiracy that took place between the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. The suit, as a result, is looking to hold all the defendants responsible financially for the unrest that happened at the U.S. Capitol building that day.
Moseley filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit for his stated reason as lack of foundation. He did this alongside attorney Juli Z. Haller, who is representing Connie Meggs, who is the wife of Kelly Meggs.
According to the motion, the legal filings:
“Implausibly seek to make all defendants in this case responsible for the intervening, independent, criminal acts of others who allegedly committed treacherous acts whether intentionally or negligently, whereas plaintiff fails to plead that these individual defendants caused any of these acts or committed any injuries.”
Racine’s lawsuit relies a lot on many of the criminal complaints that have been filed against members of both of those organization in U.S. District Court. About 24 members of the Oath Keepers were charged criminally for their roles in the attack at the Capitol and in planning the attack.
Rhodes was indicted back in January on seditious conspiracy as well as many other criminal counts.
According to the lawsuit that the District of Columbia filed, the Oath Keepers are “a militia movement group united by baseless conspiracy theories aspiring from the idea that the federal government has been co-opted by a nefarious group that is trying to strip United States citizens of their rights.”
The suit also targets the Proud Boys.
It uses encrypted online communications that the FBI collected, alleging the two groups worked together to end up planning “a coordinated attack of domestic terrorism.”
The suit reads:
“Defendants and others rioted, broke through police barricades, and physically forced their way into the Capitol. In doing so, they threatened, assaulted and injured those who tried to stop them, including officers of the District’s Metropolitan Police Department (‘MPD’) and incited terror among those inside and around the building, including members of Congress who were discharging the official duties of their offices.”
