Former President Donald Trump’s incendiary call at a recent Texas rally for his supporters to be ready for massive protests against “radical, vicious, racist prosecutors” could constitute obstruction of justice as well as other crimes, and has the potential of backfiring legally.
Former federal prosecutors said that Trump’s attack was seen as carping against separate federal and state investigations that are looking into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and into his real estate empire.
Trump ranted at supporters that they should launch the “biggest protests” ever if prosecutors “do anything wrong or illegal,” which he defines as charging him for his efforts to overturn the election, or for tax fraud in the ongoing business case.
The Texas rally happened on January 30, during which he repeated his favorite falsehoods that the presidential election was “rigged.”
Legal experts were flabbergasted that the former president used such strong language about pardoning those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if he were to win a second term in the 2024 presidential elections.
Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean said the language was frankly the “stuff of dictator.” Dean warned that “failure to confront a tyrant” only further encourages bad behavior, and emphasized the danger of Trump’s talk of pardons for the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.
Prosecutors said that the comments could reveal that Trump now feels more legal jeopardy from the three inquiries. Inquiries in New York, Washington and Atlanta have all accelerated this year. He directly called for protests in these three cities, making his anxiety quite palpable.
A former federal prosecutor said that Trump may have “shot himself in the foot” with the comments at the Texas rally, and that criminal intent can be hard to prove, but if a potential defendant says something that is intimidating or threatening to investigations, the case becomes easier.
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