Characterizing an event unfolding on live television is often tricky, and the assault on Congress last Wednesday by a mob supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud was no exception.

As the country continues to debate whether the mob was patriotic or seditious, and if it should be viewed as a serious challenge of the nation’s democratic traditions or a protest run amok, the words used to describe the scene matter – both rhetorically and legally. The Daily Record interviewed law professors at Creighton University and the University of Nebraska, as well as a political science professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. They all agreed that simply describing the incident last Wednesday as a protest wasn’t going far enough.

Those who entered the hallways of Congress, and thus who engaged in unlawful behavior, were rioters – at the very least.

 Josh Fershee, dean of the Creighton School of Law, said he referred to the action as an “armed takeover” of a government building. He said that what transpired might be most accurately called an insurrection or domestic terrorism, and it had elements of an attempted coup.

“In my view, a protest does not accurately describe a group of armed people who attack an iconic government building while the legislature is doing the people’s work, drop the American flag and raise another,” Fershee said in an email to The Daily Record.

Randall Adkins, associate dean of social sciences at UNO, said that everyone would agree that the incident began as a protest.

“But, as you know, one of the things that happen in a protest sometimes, even if it’s intended to be a peaceful protest, even if it’s intended to be an act of civil disobedience, is that people get caught up in their emotions and they then begin to engage in something like rioting,” Adkins said.

Rioting requires participants to be breaking the law, he said, such as destroying property or harming people.

“I’ve seen some pictures that suggest to me that there may have been tens of thousands of protesters there,” Adkins said. “Did tens of thousands of people engage in rioting? No, I don’t think so. Did hundreds or thousands of people engage in rioting? Well, I would say that anybody who’s walking through the Capitol building and wasn’t supposed to be walking through the Capitol building and is destroying property and is disrupting the business of the Congress is now engaging in what I would classify as rioting.”

Adkins said he believes that the best description of the large group is a mob, in which some were engaged in lawlessness. He said he believes there were likely people waiting to be forcefully pushed out or for guns to fire – a provocation that could have resulted in something more serious, despite the loss of life sustained in last Wednesday’s chaos.

Adkins also noted that Trump and many of his supporters made a big deal last summer that protesters and rioters were desecrating federal building and monuments. He said the Capitol is both.

Eric Berger, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Nebraska, said the group was a mob incited by the president.

“It’s not clear to me what their endgame was – they might very well not have had an endgame,” Berger said. “They might have just been registering their displeasure. So, I don’t know if coup or insurrection is accurate because I don’t know if there was any intent there, and if there was it wasn’t very realistic.”

The mob looted and vandalized Congress, and more importantly they disrupted congressional proceedings. Berger said it was “extremely disheartening to see some people resorting to violence.”

Creighton’s Paul McGreal sent a tweet Wednesday that Trump’s action fit the definition of incitement to lawlessness under previous U.S. Supreme Court cases.

“A number of people went directly from a political rally with the president to the Capitol specifically because there was a political and governmental function being performed that they intended to disrupt,” McGreal told The Daily Record in an interview.

The actions of the mob meet the definition of domestic terrorism used by the FBI, he said, and it also qualifies as insurrection.

“There are different definitions of insurrection both in and outside of the law, but it would be an attack on or disruption of the government,” McGreal said. “The individuals were aware – many, most of the individuals who went to the Capitol building and forcefully entered the building were aware – that it was a government building and that in that building there was an ongoing government meeting for the purpose of certifying the next president of the United States, and had the purpose of disrupting that meeting and that government function. And from that perspective, one can see that as an insurrection.”

Fellow Creighton law professor Kendra Fershee said that a coup would be an effort to overthrow the government.

“Domestic terrorism and insurrection are true and accurate labels when an armed band of people of a particular political ideology use violence to force the government to act in their favor,” she said in an interview Thursday. “It’s debatable that yesterday was an attempted coup because the goal of the terrorists was to force the government to maintain the status quo, instead of forcing a sitting leader out of office.”

Nevertheless, there’s no speculation about whether Joe Biden is going to take office Jan. 20, so Kendra Fershee said describing an effort to block that as a coup may not be wrong, either.

Kyle Langvardt, a Nebraska professor of First Amendment and constitutional law, said the coup label might be better applied to the president’s efforts directly.

“I think coup might be a better descriptor for what Trump was trying to do throughout December and early January,” Langvardt said. “He was trying to use certain parts of the machinery of government to entrench his own power, I think in a kind of bloodless coup. This, it’s a little more outsourced and maybe a word like insurrection is more appropriate.”

Patrick Borchers, a Creighton law professor, pointed to a statement made by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani during the rally that preceded the rioting.

 “Giuliani’s statement that this ‘will be trial by combat’ also clearly contemplated violence,” Borchers said in an email, noting that Trump also encouraged the mob to disrupt the execution of the requirements of the Electoral Count Act of 1877.

Borchers said the incident best fits an insurrection – a violent uprising against the government.

“I also think the actions fit within the definition of a ‘seditious conspiracy’ under 18 USC Sec. 2384,” Borchers said.

Fellow Creighton law professor Michael Kelly said it’s important to remember the April 30 armed occupation of Michigan’s state capitol building “by similar right-wing groups in direct response to the president’s tweet to ‘liberate Michigan’” from the governor’s mask mandate. Those extremists later attempted to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

“The same elements apply here except that (Trump) wasn’t physically present to incite them in Michigan, it was through a digital platform,” Kelly said in an email.

Kelly said that the Michigan statehouse was a “dress rehearsal” for the takeover of the U.S. Capitol, and Trump is responsible.

“He should be removed from office in accordance with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and then prosecuted for both events,” Kelly said.

Dismissing what happened as a protest would be legally inaccurate, Kelly said, noting the target of the disruption was the legislative branch, not a Walmart. Likewise, the conduct of the mob wouldn’t fall under protected free speech.

“The president committed sedition and began this particular insurrection in his address to the mob at the White House, directing them to commit violence against the legislative branch – and against his own vice president – in the Capitol,” Kelly said. “The mob then committed an insurrection against the government when it attacked the Capitol building with the members of Congress inside who were carrying out a constitutionally mandated duty which the president wanted to be stopped.”