So far, legal experts and lawmakers say Trump has not crossed the line from merely inflammatory rhetoric to using words that clearly meet the legal definition of incitement to violence in his comments made after the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago search.
against a litany of enemies he says are unfairly uniting against him, including law enforcement agencies, Democrats and the mainstream media.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat on the Jan. 6 committee, issued a similar warning in a CNN interview the day after Trump's remarks. "He uses heightened rhetoric to talk about inflammatory issues on a large scale and that may in fact motivate people to commit acts of violence, but it’s a stretch to say anything he said would constitute incitement," said Amy Collins, a former Justice Department official and criminal defense attorney at law firm Price Benowitz LLP.
Also, he said: “Words alone isn’t really going to give you a provable case. You pretty much have to have a direct assertion; 'I want you to go there and do this now,' then an immediate reaction by the intended recipient.” Those kind of remarks, she said, usually didn't amount to incitement because they were too generalized.
One Jan. 6 rioter, Stephen Ayres, testified how he believed Trump’s repeated false assertions about the 2020 election being stolen was what prompted him to travel to Washington and join the mob that stormed the Capitol.
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