Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe is among many prominent voices who are calling for Republicans — even those who support the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump 100 percent — to defuse the time bomb Trump lit when he publicly told his supporters that “Biden DOJ” and the FBI had plans to assassinate him during the search for classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
(NOTE Trump wrote that they were “locked & loaded and ready to take me out.”)
Tribe shared a speech by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), in which the Congressman pleaded with high-level Republicans — most notably Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who are sharing Trump’s assertion to deny it, both because it is demonstrably false and because of the danger the lie poses the Republic and to the political order.
Excellent statement by @RepSwalwell on the urgent need for every Republican who still supports Trump to condemn Trump’s dangerous lie that Biden or the FBI authorized the use of deadly force against Trump in searching Mar-a-Lago. That lie encourages violence against Biden and… https://t.co/q1HB4AInpH
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) May 25, 2024
Despite Trump’s lawyers saying in court during his request for presidential immunity that it could be a protected act if he, as president, called for SEAL team 6 to assassinate a political rival, that is not what the FBI planned to do during the search.
And to convince a credulous MAGA segment of the public that President Biden had such an intent, Swalwell says, is to cause enormous damage to the rule of law and order and to invite chaos.
Greene wrote that the Biden DOJ and FBI “gave the greenlight” for the assassination. “Does everyone get it yet?” she added, asking “what are Republicans going to do about it?” It is an eye for an eye prompt, which Swalwell calls “a concerning statement” that “creates the pretext for violence.”
Swalwell says Greene’s statement suggests to a nation that is “armed to the teeth” that their own government and “the people that wear the badge” are out to assassinate the former President. “Please,” Swalwell says, “condemn it.”
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) agreed to condemn the statement, saying “both sides have a lunatic fringe in their movement, ours and yours.”
Tribe writes of both Trump’s insinuation and Greene’s statement that the “lie encourages violence against Biden and against government officials generally and it is going viral partly because of the deafening silence throughout the GOP.”