Federal judge rules Donald Trump’s tweets incited violence
We’ve all spent years watching Donald Trump posts tweets that were obviously and explicitly intended to incite violence – and we’ve spent years watching that violence play out across the nation in deadly fashion. Now a federal judge agrees with this assessment, in a new ruling in a civil case.
Various entities in Oregon have taken the Department of Homeland Security to court with a civil case which alleges that federal agents acted in violent and improper fashion during the DHS invasion of Portland earlier this year. The overall case is still playing out, but the judge in the case granted a preliminary injunction this evening, immediately restricting what federal agents can and can’t do to protesters. Specifically, ABC News says that the judge found that Donald Trump’s tweets helped incite the violence and improper behavior of the federal agents in question.
This is a remarkable ruling. The case against the federal government and not against Donald Trump personally, and it’s a civil case not a criminal case. Yet a federal judge just decided that Trump incited violence, which under any normal circumstances would make him liable – in a civil and criminal sense – for the violence that he caused. This ruling could set precedent for the kinds of legal penalties Trump will start to face if he loses the election.
