Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; OR committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, escape, murder, kidnapping, treason, espionage, sabotage …  or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree.

And:

From Justicia:

The felony murder rule is a rule that allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the defendant is not the killer. The felony murder rule applies only to those crimes that are considered “inherently dangerous,” as the rationale underlying the felony murder rule is that certain crimes are so dangerous that society wants to deter individuals from engaging in them altogether. Thus, when a person participates in an inherently dangerous crime, he or she may be held responsible for the fatal consequences of that crime, even if someone else caused the actual death.

According to the New York Times, the Department of Justice has not ruled out charging Trump with a crime:

The Justice Department said on Thursday that it would not rule out pursuing charges against President Trump for his possible role a day earlier in encouraging a mob of his supporters to march on the Capitol just before thousands stormed the building.

“We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, told reporters.

The question as to whether Trump could be charged with felony murder is dinging around Twitter. We believed it should be analyzed here, without the lay-speculation that infects a real analysis. We will not be posting tweets.

First of all, DOJ might charge Trump with inciting a riot or another “inherently dangerous crime” (whether this fits treason or not is a separate question), and the riot resulted in death. A woman died in the Capitol yesterday and thus all participants could have been charged with felony murder given her killing (it doesn’t matter that officers killed her). But an officer died on Thursday. An officer’s death that results from the commission of an inherently dangerous felony is one of the most common uses of the felony murder rule. Again, felony murder has nothing to do with who did the actual killing and it is not some esoteric, weird, law that’s rarely used. It is used every week all over the country.

It is one of the primary means to charge someone with murder even though that person didn’t specifically “kill” the victim.

It actually does need to be considered. Trump incited his crowd to riot, the tweets, the speeches, and perhaps keeping troops out of the way, and-or other actions to decrease the law-enforcement presence in and around the Capitol.

As for evidence, investigators would want to see Trump’s phone and look at whether Trump was communicating with someone planning yesterday’s crime. Or, agents might look at whether Trump scrolled through the many Facebook and Twitter posts discussing storming the Capitol. He specifically sent his crowd to the Capitol, not the Lincoln Memorial or any other place to “protest.” He told them to get “tough.”

The Justice Department knows that this goes far deeper than “just” those people charging into the Capitol (any of them could be charged with felony-murder, too). They will look at groups online as well as Trump and others.

It needs to be considered and it appears that DOJ already knows that he needs to be investigated. We do not believe a self-pardon will work as we’ve already analyzed and noted in other articles. He is a monster.

We will watch developments closely.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak