Consider my question academic. I know you’re a lawyer, but feel free to take off the lawyer hat for a minute. We’re on a discussion blog, not in a courtroom, so anyone can answer if they care to.
I clearly addressed the non-violent rhetorical use of “fight like hell” in my initial post, and I clearly stated in my followup that I get it’s not evidence. In fact, I assume Jack Smith has no interest in pursuing this line of questioning because he already declared DT’s speech to be covered by the 1st amendment.
That’s because the context of most people saying it is directing others to take concrete actions that can make an impact without violence. Everyone in a campaign knows that it means to hit the streets, knock on doors, register people to vote when it’s said BEFORE the election. What are the concrete actions citizens could take on certification day to get DT back into office after 2 months of losing dozens of court cases and having no evidence whatsoever that he was the rightful winner?
And there is little documentary evidence that trump intended for the mob to do violence against Congress.
Maybe, but there’s also no indication that he tried to stop it when he started getting reports of the violence. IIRC, Ivanka, Meadows and some Fox News anchors were trying to get him to tell the rioters to stop, but he didn’t do that for about 2 hours.
What does “unleashing protestors against the vote certification” mean while the building was locked down? Were they going to block traffic so no MOCs could get in? Were they going to yell loudly until Pence stopped counting?