this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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The J-6th rioters got court hearings and sentences before Trump was even brought up on charges. That's telling.
Now it's too late and he's the frontrunner. By taking so long they might destabilize the country.
The prosecuted J-6th rioters actually entered the capital building, committed crimes with their own hands on camera, or spent months prior to the insurrection explicitly (in writing) organizing people to do things like kidnap Nancy Peloci and kill Mike Pence.
Those are easier cases to make, and those defendants filling court records with defenses of "I was just following the orders of my president" help build a case against Trump himself.
The "Imminent lawless action" standard in first amendment jurisprudence is a harder one to meet than most people realize. There's reasonable precedent to say that enough time passes between Trump inciting his croud to insurrection and them actually doing it that it doesn't meet the "imminent" standard. It's not in any way an easy case to make and win.
There are many federal and state cases against Trump right now, and to say that they've been intentionally slow-walked to cooencide with the election is to ignore the years of litigation that have already happened in most of them.