One of the legs of the "Trump is an insurrectionist" argument is the speech that Trump gave on Jan 6. Those proposing this argument, including the Colorado court, claim that Trump knew or should have known that peopld would take his speech as a call to violence. Indeed, they say that Trump should not have even exercised his right to petition his government BECAUSE such people would likely be in attendance.
Now, sane people know this is a bunk argument even without citing the follow up video that was deleted from Twitter BY Twitter telling people to go home. Now we have Vox making the argument against the Colorado court AND those still hanging onto the chad that is "muh Trump speech":
Now what would this article have to do with anything?
Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”
Unless what?
"The speakers words were intended (NOT JUST LIKELY) to produce imminent disorder .
Hence even if they were to argue that Trump's speech as "likely" to produce "imminent disorder", There still could not be a case against him based on that.
The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again.
You don't say.
Indeed, as Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from his court’s Mckesson decision, warned in one of his dissents, his court’s decision would make protest organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” So, under the Fifth Circuit’s rule, a Ku Klux Klansman could sabotage the Black Lives Matter movement simply by showing up at its protests and throwing stones.
Or you know, instigators at the Jan 6 rally.
I would expect this to show up in the Jack Smith trial, should it occur.
