Certainly. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect violence. It also doesn’t protect true threats (that is, threats that a reasonable person would take as an expression of genuine intent to do harm, which the speaker intended that way) nor actual incitement (speech intended, and likely, to cause imminent lawless action). Moreover, the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit using someone’s speech as evidence to prove motive, pattern, or intent — like using the defendants’ prior speech in an attempt to prove that they intended to go to the rally to assault people.
ETA: Friendly reminder of the Freeze Peach thread…
