Since William Barr has been exposed this evening as nothing more than a bigger shill for Donald Trump than we ever imagined and boy scout Robert Mueller feels bound by a Department of Justice opinion (not law or constitutional provision) which claims a sitting president cannot be indicted for a crime, we need to look for other arenas to test this questionable premise.

Today, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled in a case brought by Democratic members of Congress against Trump for violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution can proceed.  This dovetails an earlier ruling that a similar case brought by the attorneys general of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia can also go to trial.  However, in the state initiated case, Trump’s Roy Cohn clones have temporarily blocked subpoenas for financial records associated with the Trump D.C. hotel.

However, I think there is a better case for charging and prosecuting Trump for inciting violence.  Here are the facts.  On Saturday, John T. Earnest, using an assault rifle, killed one and injured three others during prayer services at the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California.  In a manifesto posted on-line, Earnest justified the attack based on his belief Jews deserved to be killed for trying to destroy the white race through immigration.  Now where could an impressionable 19 year-old get such an idea.

Among other places, the South lawn of the White House.  On October 28, 2018, Trump had the following exchange with a reporter concerning immigrants moving through Mexico in hopes of finding asylum in the United States.

REPORTER: Do you think somebody is funding the caravan?

TRUMP: I wouldn’t be surprised, yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised.

REPORTER: George Soros (a Jewish philanthropist)?

TRUMP: I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised.  A lot of people say yes.

No, Mr. dog-whistle-in-chief.  Not a lot of people.  Just you and the white supremacists, racists and neo-Nazis who support your America First agenda.

Last Saturday, one of them used your exact words as a rationale for shooting up a house of worship.  And according to the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, you can be charged with inciting “imminent” violence.  Why “imminent?”  In its landmark decision, the Court ruled in favor of the defendant, a member of the KKK, and struck down Ohio’s criminal syndicalism statute which broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence, the law under which Brandenburg was convicted in a state trial.  Yet the Justices felt the need to distinguish between inflammatory language and speech that “produces imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”  Justice Leonard Hand suggested there were three elements to the “Brandenburg test”–intent, imminence and likelihood.

I cannot predict what a judge and jury would do, but at a minimum Donald Trump should be charged and tried for inciting imminent violence.  Let a jury decide if Trump incited Earnest, the likelihood that he believed Trump gave him license to kill and maim and whether the time frame between Trump’s White House comments and the attack on the Chabad sanctuary meets the imminence test.

If the six months between October 28, 2018 and April seems like too much of a stretch, how about the pipe bomb sent to Soros’ home just days after Trump “theorized” (the Washington Post’s euphemism for lying) that Soros was funding protests against the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  Fortunately, that device was proactively detonated by a bomb squad.

While Trump supporters tell us to “Let Trump Be Trump,” (the title of Corey Lewandowski’s ode to his benefactor), we now know people like Lewandowski didn’t practice what they preached when asked to facilitate the firing of Robert Mueller.  If they had, Trump would have completely shredded the Constitution by now and provided a more compelling case for obstruction of justice.  They also know “letting Trump be Trump” threatens the safety of innocent people as well as political rivals yet they say nothing.  In marketing, they call that brand loyalty.  And at the extreme, it can keep customers from reporting product defects and deceptive advertising (just ask Boeing).

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP