Can citation inflation include citing someone for your own inference?

Yes. Exactly.

Citation inflation can occur when:

Scholar A establishes proposition X.

You infer Y from X.

You cite Scholar A as though Scholar A established Y.

For example:

Smith establishes:

legal citizenship and lived citizenship can differ.

You infer:

This distinction helps explain why formerly enslaved people could be legally free while remaining socially unequal.

That inference may be perfectly reasonable.

But the citation should make clear that:

Smith provides the framework

and

you apply the framework to your historical evidence.

Your inference does not become Smith's argument merely because Smith's work helped you make it.