The indictment is another legally baseless waste of taxpayer money [1]:
> To prove a threat against the President in violation of Section 871, the prosecution must offer “(1) the proof of "a true threat" and (2) that the threat is made "knowingly and willfully."“ United States v. Lockhart, 382 F.3d 447, 449-450 (4th Cir. 2004).
[...]
> In Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969), the United States Supreme Court took up the conviction of an 18-year-old man who said this during an anti-draft protest during Vietnam: "They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J. . . . . They are not going to make me kill my black brothers." The Court articulated the core of the “true threat” doctrine, noting that political rhetoric, hyperbole, and robust debate that does not convey an intent to do harm is protected by the First Amendment
And assuming for the sake of charity that 8647 on its own is at least inflammatory speech (notwithstanding the multiple noninflammatory meanings of 86 which could apply in relation to POTUS [2]), an April 28, 2026 indictment made over speech communicated on May 25, 2025 to no effect of violence soon after (a day, a week, a month, all nothing) fails the "imminent lawless action" Brandenburg test [3].
Yeah I got 86'd from a bar once. The person I was with got drunk and obnoxious, so we both got thrown out and told not to come back. They specifically told us we were 86'd. But, we were certainly not threatened with death or anything like that. At worst, if we tried to not leave, they might have called the cops on us.
TFA explains why the Supreme Court's decision is yet another new phenomenon. Related context from Chris Geidner [1] (wherein he also examines the April 27th oral arguments in the Chatrie v. United States, the geofencing case):
> This hopefully will put an end to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ridiculous Fox News defense of the shadow docket in October 2025, where she insisted that “in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue.”
> In that interview, Barrett proclaimed that “[d]eciding a merits case is a painstaking process,“ very different from the “preliminary” review on the shadow docket. In those cases, she said that there are often not “long opinion[s]“ because “it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue.”
> Between that and all the "the power grid can't handle everyone buying an electric car"
Blow the dad's mind with "the power grid can't handle the excess electricity generated on consecutive sunny days (yet)" [1]. (I'm partly kidding, because will he really believe it?)
AT&T's gambit is to argue that the government owes them a jury trial, and to simultaneously ensure that a jury trial never happens [1]:
> You were to ignore that AT&T has been at the vanguard of making jury trials impossible for customers through its use of fine print forcing users to pursue binding arbitration, a lopsided system that finds in favor of corporations a vast majority of the time. Or that AT&T spends millions of dollars annually successfully lobotomizing the entirely of telecom oversight, be it congressional, legal or regulatory.
> Former EFF Activism Director's New Book, Transaction Denied, Explores What Happens When Financial Companies Act like Censors
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