Not sure why this is being downvoted, "incitement" has a very narrow definition legally, see the Brandenburg test. Of course there are many other ways to incite a mob to violence that would avoid legal consequences, which i'm sure his advisors are aware of.

If what Trump said that morning was intended to cause that violence, then it absolutely passes the “imminent lawless action” test. It specifically said to start the action immediately and was clearly likely to cause the action. The question is what his intent was.

Where did he clearly incite an illegal action? As far as I can tell his speech just told his supporters to walk to the Capitol. He didn't say anything about committing illegal acts. In fact, he explicitly said people should be peaceful. Courts are not going to try and parse secret messages from a speech when there is an explicit disavowal of any criminal act.

The rule people seem to be advocating for here is that if a politician directs their supporters to protest at a particular location then they are responsible for all illegal acts their supporters carry out at that location. That seems to be unreasonable standard and it is also a standard that legally has not been applied before. In terms of politics/media I'm sure people have tried to apply this standard but it is very wrong. It seems every time some whacko commits a crime one side will accuse the other side of inciting the crime with their rhetoric. I don't think this is at all fair and I also believe it could lead to an equilibrium where people are incentivised to commit crimes. It is often quite hard to murder a politician (ask the baseball shooter) but if you can take a piece of the board by committing a crime and getting caught then that might be better option for a whacko. Obviously, this has not happened in this case but if this standard is enforced then this is something to worry about in the future.

> There is no way Trump would ever be convicted in a court of law for what he did.

It doesn’t matter. The standards of the courtroom are not being applied here. The facts are plain: there were a hundred off ramps for Trump over the 2 months since the election and he chose to take none of them. He failed in his duty to the Presidency as an institution and the idea of separation of powers and coequal branches of government. He tried to intimidate the Congress into doing his bidding.

You get that it’s a much more essential question than whether he is technically allowed to do what he did, right? Impeachment and the 25th amendment are political remedies that must be used both to punish what this president has done and to warn other presidents that they cannot cross the bright lines that define democracy.

He is the nations principal law enforcement officer and he aided and abetted lawlessness of the most dire kind.