A ruling from a DC federal judge on Wednesday in the case against a Capitol rioter appears to suggest that disgraced former President Trump telling his fans to “fight like hell” was a knowing request for them to break the law, which they most certainly did, Politico reports.

The whole thing is some really inside baseball type of shit but is apparently significant as it gives an idea of how the judiciary would handle a case brought from the criminal referrals for Trump by the House January 6th Select Committee. DC Circuit Judge John Bates, a George W Bush appointee, cited the select committee’s report and referrals as he tossed a motion by defendant Alexander Sheppard to use the “public authority” defense to claim “Hey Trump told me it was okay to go to the Capitol,” in his upcoming trial. “Thus, the conclusions reached here – that even if protesters believed they were following orders, they were not misled about the legality of their actions… is consistent with the Select Committee’s findings,” Bates wrote in his ruling, probably ruining Sheppard’s day.

Now to be extra careful with this, nothing from the above two paragraphs does not itself appear in the Politico article in some way or another. They did not use any words like “incitement” or “inducement” so neither did we, despite the temptation to do so. But it’s hard not to read that it’s an “early window into how the judiciary might interpret the unusual findings of criminal violations by a congressional committee,” and not think that they’re really trying to say something a little closer to “A judge just handed prosecutors a road map for charging the fat fuck with ‘inciting or assisting an insurrection’ as referred by the committee.” We’ve gotten in trouble with readers for taking things a little further than we should have a few times this year (even if we were eventually proven kind of right most of those times), so we’ll be circumspect here and keep it at a lower pitch.