Lies, Damn Lies and Insurrection

with Gary Edinger
February 8th from 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Summary: Well isn’t that some crazy sh*t?! The President’s speech and the insurrection at the Capital provide a great, if tragic, lesson in civics and the First Amendment. From the perspective of a First Amendment litigator, some of that day’s activities were clearly protected speech, some was extremely borderline (the President’s intemperate language and Rudy’s call for “trial by combat”), while the vandalism at the Capitol clearly was not speech of any kind. To my thinking there are few parallels between the events of Jan. 6th and the BLM demonstrations last summer. There is a difference between civil war and civil reform. On the other hand, there is no question that there were some bad actors engaged in rioting and that did not look much like reasoned discourse.

Bio:
Gary Edinger, is a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association (FALA), a group of prominent attorneys responsible for litigating many important free-speech cases. He is also active on the legal panel for the North Florida Chapter of the Florida ACLU. He is the lead attorney at law firm Gary S. Edinger, P.A. in Gainesville, Florida.

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