Donald Trump shared a post calling for a "citizen's arrest" of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron — and a legal expert said that should make him liable for incitement.
The former president has been trashing the pair — who aren't covered by a gag order imposed by the judge — before the case went to trial, and Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson wrote a new column for MSNBC saying that Trump had escalated his attacks into a violation of the law by calling for vigilante action against them.
"As an initial matter, it is important to state the obvious," wrote Levinson. "There is no basis for a citizen’s arrest of James or Engoron. New York does allow for such arrests, but only when the person being arrested has committed a felony in the presence of the person making the arrest. Neither James nor Engoron is guilty of doing anything other than their jobs."
Sharing the post should be tantamount to suggestion, Levinson wrote, and Trump should not be able to hide behind the original author of the post, which he amplified on his Truth Social network.
"The speech here should be viewed as incitement and Trump should be held to account for it," Levinson wrote. "Under Supreme Court case law, speech can only be punished as incitement where it is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action' and 'likely to incite or produce such action.'"
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The post clearly wasn't intended to be a winning legal strategy but was instead a political appeal to his base, and Levinson suspects some of them would hear the message as a call to arms.
"Trump, through his 're-Truthing,' is signaling support for the view that people should take matters into their own hands and make a lawless arrest of a prosecutor and a judge," Levinson wrote.
"This is not supporting vigilante justice, but goading people to engage in criminal behavior. We need look no further than Jan. 6, 2021, to understand that it is entirely reasonable to believe that people will take actions based on Trump’s words. As Ty Cobb, former White House special counsel during the Trump administration, said about the former president sharing that social media post, 'These are the types of incendiary attacks that do lead to violence.'"
