Oopsie. I may have, yes.
And good for you. It's a good answer to the question.
I'm interested at the backpedalling that's happening - oh, it wasn't that bad, there wasn't much theft (while ignoring the way they trashed the rooms they got into).
In July there was a large-scale protest in our city following the decision by the attorney general not to charge police officers in the fatal shooting of a fleeing suspect. As part of the protest, red paint was applied to the street outside the (brand new) attorney general's office building, and to some parts of the building exterior. The protest was organized by our usual BLM organizers. The woman who did nothing more than buy the paint at the local Home Depot was charged with a
first-degree felony. That's a 25-to-life prison sentence. (Under pressure, the attorney general turned prosecution over to an independent prosecutor who dismissed and reduced the charges to something more appropriate.). This is the same attorney general who recently signed Utah up for the ill-conceived Texas lawsuit, without permission from the governor or legislature.
The point is the one I made before: a big part of the problem I see in the United States is the preferential assignment of accountability according to privilege -- and that this is
expected.
IANAL so I don't know what the rules are for proving incitement in a court case, but I don't think he said anything encouraging violence.
Inciting a riot is a federal crime, regardless of how violent it gets. As to other forms of incitement, there are legal doctrines that address talking around the subject without actually saying the thing. IANAL either, but in speaking with lawyers I gather you don't actually have to say, "Go commit a crime." If the speaker knows, or should have known, that acting on his words would be likely entail an illegal act, it can still be incitement. Since these people were helpful enough to record every nuance of their activities, there's plenty of evidence to suggest they thoroughly believed they were there on the President's orders, doing what he asked them to do. Here, as in the Georgia phone-call test, the President's best defense would be that he was too stupid to realize that the armed mob he was addressing might actually contemplate using force.
More importantly, incitement under U.S. law is governed by the so-called
Brandenburg test, and has more to do with the timing of the action. Because the President said that they were going to set out immediately and march to the Capitol, it goes worse for him according to
Brandenburg.
Of course, having said that, the other frustrating thing is the way Trump can convince people to do things for him with no intention of rewarding them for having done it - "Let's walk up to the Capitol and convince those Republican congress people to <*wink*> do the right thing," followed by "The people who were violent should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
This is why people quit doing business with him in New York and why he went packing to Florida. But also yes, how he can keep convincing a new crop of rubes to fling themselves off cliffs for him is a mystery.
The sudden urging for unity and clemency is being interpreted by some as Republican actors running scared: if they don't appear to support the action of these violent insurrectionists, they will become targets themselves. This to me is just desserts. They played with fire.
