Federal judge rules lawsuit alleging Trump incited violence can proceed

A Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky
(Image credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

A federal judge in Louisville, Kentucky, ruled Friday that President Trump cannot use a free speech defense to quash a lawsuit accusing him of inciting violence at a campaign rally last year, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Saturday.

Trump was speaking in Louisville in March of 2016 when he pointed to protesters and repeatedly told his supporters, "get 'em out of here." Judge David J. Hale ruled the injuries three protesters suffered while being removed by event attendees are a "direct and proximate result" of Trump's comments, which can be plausibly interpreted as "an order, an instruction, a command" for use of force.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.