, a ferocious defender of free speech, charles friede, president reagan's solicitor general, stephen calabrese, cofounder of the federalist society released a statement calling the president's first amendment argument legally frivolous, adding "we all agree that the first amendment does not prevent the senate from convicting president trump and disqualifying him from holding future office. they went on to say, no reasonable scholar or a jurist could conclude that president trump had a first amendment right to incite a violent attack on the seat of the legislative branch or to sit back and watch on television as congress was terrorized and the capital sector. incitement to violence is not protected by the first amendment, that's why most americans have dismissed donald trump's first amendment rhetoric simply by referring to justice oliver wendell holmes' handy phrase "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater" but even that time-honored principle doesn't begin to capture how off-base the argument is. this case is much worse than someone who falsely shouts "fire" in a crowded theater. more a cas

he's a cofounder of the federalist society, stephen calabrese. ronaldreagan's solicitor general charles reed . luminary washington lawyer charles cooper. among hundreds of other constitutional lawyers and professors , i commend the people i named, to read the recent writing to you in the newspapers over the last several days. and all of the key precedents along with detailed explanations of the constitutional history and textual analysis appear in the trial brief we filed last week and the reply brief that we filed very early this morning. i'll spare you replay i want to highlight a few key points from constitutional history that strikes me as compelling and foreclosing president trumps argument that there's a secret january exception away in the constitution. the first point comes from english history which matters because as hamilton wrote england provided a model from which the idea of this institution has been borrowed . and it would have been immediately obvious to anyone familiar with that history that former officials could be held account

he's a cofounder of the federalist society, stephen calabrese.ronaldreagan's solicitor general charles reed . luminary washington lawyer charles cooper. among hundreds of other constitutional lawyers and professors , i commend the people i named, to read the recent writing to you in the newspapers over the last several days. and all of the key precedents along with detailed explanations of the constitutional history and textual analysis appear in the trial brief we filed last week and the reply brief that we filed very early this morning. i'll spare you replay i want to highlight a few key points from constitutional history that strikes me as compelling and foreclosing president trumps argument that there's a secret january exception away in the constitution. the first point comes from english history which matters because as hamilton wrote england provided a model from which the idea of this institution has been borrowed . and it would have been immediately obvious to anyone familiar with that history that former officials could be held accounta