Why the focus on 'incitement' creates an opening for Trump's impeachment defense
During former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, senators should be seeking to answer a political question, but they're instead been left to ponder a legal one, David A. Graham writes for The Atlantic.
The House's single article of impeachment alleges Trump incited a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, but Graham believes focusing so heavily on the term "incitement" provides Trump's defense team with "an opening" to argue, as they've already done, that he was speaking "metaphorically" at the rally which preceded the breaching of the Capitol last month. "In legalizing what is rightly a political matter, however," Graham writes, noting that Trump should instead be on trial, more broadly, for his months-long efforts to overturn the presidential election results, "the managers inadvertently encouraged recourse to the legal definition of incitement, and in particular to the Supreme Court's test for what constitutes the crime of incitement in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which, in the interest of protecting free speech, creates a difficult bar to surmount in a criminal court."
Graham considers this part of a pattern that occurred throughout Trump's presidency. During Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference, the anti-Trump crowd zeroed in on whether his campaign "colluded" with the Kremlin, and in his first impeachment trial, attention was on terms like "quid pro quo" and "blackmail," which, Graham argues, led to "intense semantic fights that distracted from the basic fact that Trump had extorted Ukraine's government to assist him in the election." Read more at The Atlantic.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
-
Proposed Trump-Putin talks in Budapest on holdSpeed Read Trump apparently has no concrete plans to meet with Putin for Ukraine peace talks
-
Bolivia elects centrist over far-right presidential rivalSpeed Read Relative political unknown Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, was elected president
-
Madagascar president in hiding, refuses to resignSpeed Read Andry Rajoelina fled the country amid Gen Z protests and unrest
-
Sanae Takaichi: Japan’s Iron Lady set to be the country’s first woman prime ministerIn the Spotlight Takaichi is a member of Japan’s conservative, nationalist Liberal Democratic Party
-
Israel, Hamas agree to first step of Trump peace planSpeed Read Israel’s military pulls back in Gaza amid prisoner exchange
-
Israel intercepts 2nd Gaza aid flotilla in a weekSpeed Read The Israeli military intercepted a flotilla of nine boats with 145 activists aboard along with medical and food aid
-
Japan poised to get first woman prime ministerSpeed Read The ruling Liberal Democratic Party elected former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi
-
Israel and Hamas meet on hostages, Trump’s planSpeed Read Hamas accepted the general terms of Trump’s 20-point plan, including the release of all remaining hostages



