Trump Phone: Trump Demands Charges for Jeffries After Post
Donald Trump on Thursday used his Trump Phone post on Truth Social to demand that Hakeem Jeffries be charged with inciting violence. He blamed the House minority leader for remarks Trump linked to last month's White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting attempt.
Trump called Jeffries a "lunatic" and "Low IQ" and wrote that "Radical Left Democrats actually want to Destroy our Country." The post also included a graphic showing Jeffries speaking at an April press conference and a still image from security camera footage of the attempted shooting at the Washington Hilton.
Jeffries' April Remarks
Jeffries said in April, "We are in an era of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time." Three days later, a gunman attempted to storm the DC Hilton ballroom where Trump was attending the annual fundraising dinner. One shot was fired by the alleged gunman and five shots were fired by a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer just minutes after Trump sat down for dinner.
Trump's demand came after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tied Jeffries' comments to the violence. Two days after the attempted assassination, she told News during an interview on the red carpet that Trump's planned speech would be funny and entertaining and added, "It’ll be funny. It’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room," before later blaming Jeffries at a briefing.
Leavitt and Jeffries
Jeffries answered reporters by telling Leavitt to "get lost." He also said, "Clean up your own house before you have anything to say to us about the language that we use."
A federal statute cited in the background materials makes it a crime to solicit, command, induce, or otherwise endeavor to persuade another person to engage in a crime of violence, but the same materials say a charge under that law would be unlikely to succeed because prosecutors would have to prove intent for a specific crime. Trump nevertheless wrote that Jeffries should be charged with inciting violence, keeping the dispute centered on whether the April remark can be tied to the later attack.
