Trump’s team cites First Amendment in contesting charges in Ga. case
ATLANTA — The charges against Donald Trump in the Georgia election interference case seek to criminalize political speech and advocacy conduct that the First Amendment protects, a lawyer for the former president said Thursday as he argued that the indictment should be dismissed.
The hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was on a filing from Mr. Trump and on two pretrial motions by co-defendant David Shafer and centered on technical legal arguments. It marked something of a return to normalcy after the case was rocked by allegations that District Attorney Fani Willis improperly benefited from her relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor hired for the case.
“Thereis nothing alleged factually against President Trump that is not political speech,” Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, told the judge. Mr. Sadow said a sitting president expressing concerns about an election is “the height of political speech.”
Prosecutor Donald Wakeford countered that Mr. Trump’s statements are not protected by the First Amendment because they were integral to criminal activity.
“It’s not just that they were false. It’s not that the defendant has been hauled into a courtroom because the prosecution doesn’t like what he said,” Mr. Wakeford said, adding that Mr. Trump is free to express his opinion and make legitimate protests. “What he is not allowed to do is to employ his speech and his expression and his statements as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate Georgia’s RICO statute, to impersonate public officers, to file false documents, to make false statements to the government.”
Ms. Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute, to charge Mr. Trump and 18 others with allegedly participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
Most of the charges against Mr. Shafer, a former state Republican Party chairman, have to do with his involvement in the casting of Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump by a group of Georgia Republicans even though the state’s election had been certified in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The charges against Mr. Shafer include impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements and writings, and attempting to file false documents.
His lawyer, Craig Gillen, argued that the activity Mr. Shafer engaged in was lawful at the time and that Schafer was acting in accordance with requirements of the Electoral Count Act. Because a legal challenge to the presidential election results was pending on Dec. 14, 2020, when it came time for electors to meet to cast Georgia’s electoral votes, Mr. Gillen said it was up to Congress to determine whether a Democratic or Republican slate of electors should be counted for the state.
Mr. Gillen said the accusation that Mr. Shafer and others were impersonating a public officer, namely a presidential elector, does not hold water because electors are not considered public officers. Prosecutor Will Wooten argued that a presidential elector is clearly an office created by law and that Mr. Shafer and others were charged because they falsely presented themselves as the state’s official presidential electors.