Attorneys representing a Kansas man who faces life in prison for conspiring to massacre Somali Muslim refugees in 2016 say his sentence should be reduced because then-candidate Donald Trump's political rhetoric made 2016 "lit."

Patrick Eugene Stein’s attorneys filed a memo in U.S. District Court in the District of Kansas on Monday, asking that their client be sentenced to no more than 15 years in prison with a “lengthy post release supervision period.”

“2016 was ‘lit,’” the attorneys wrote. “The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president.”

The attorneys note that Stein was “an early and avid supporter” of Trump’s, and thus when Trump unexpectedly won the presidential election, “it is reasonable to speculate that it would have changed things among the defendants as well.”

“The urgency for action would be gone,” they wrote. “The feeling of a losing battle would be gone. The conspiracies, in part, would be disproven as the transition from Obama to Trump took place. It is logical to conclude that the discussed attack would never have happened in the world that existed post-Trump.”

Stein, along with Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright, planned to bomb a mosque and apartment complex in Garden City, Kan., the day after the 2016 presidential election. The three were arrested in October 2016 by the FBI.

In court, prosecutors played recordings of Stein talking about killing Muslims with weapons dipped in pigs blood and describing them as “cockroaches.”

In recent days, Trump’s rhetoric has been blamed for inciting political violence, though he and the White House have rejected those claims.

On Wednesday, Gregory Bush, a white man, was charged with killing two black people at a grocery store in Kentucky after he tried to enter a black church. On Friday, Cesar Sayoc was arrested and charged with five federal crimes in connection with several prominent Democrats and CNN being mailed pipe bombs. On Saturday, Robert Bowers was arrested after a mass shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 people dead.