Trump claims protected speech in election case

ATLANTA — An attorney for Donald Trump pressed the judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case to dismiss charges against the former president, arguing that Trump’s statements challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, even if they were false, were protected political speech under the First Amendment.

In a Thursday court hearing, Steve Sadow, an attorney for Trump, argued his client’s claims “calling into question” his 2020 loss should not be criminalized because they were “core value, political discourse” that is constitutionally protected free speech even if it is found to be untrue.

“There is nothing alleged factually against President Trump that is not political speech,” Sadow argued. “Take out the political speech. No criminal charges.”

Sadow suggested Trump had been charged in Georgia because prosecutors believed the former president’s statements were untrue. But he told Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, that even false statements made in campaign or election statements are still protected speech under the First Amendment.

“The mere fact that it’s false is all that they have,” Sadow said.

Fulton County prosecutors vigorously disagreed, accusing Trump’s lawyer of trying to recast the charges against Trump, who they claim was squarely at the center of a sweeping criminal conspiracy to reverse his loss in Georgia in 2020.

“It’s not just that he lied over and over and over again,” prosecutor Donald Wakeford said. “What we have heard today is an attempt to rewrite the indictment, to take out parts that are inconvenient, and say, ‘Well, it’s all speech. It’s all talking.’ He was just a guy asking questions and not someone who was part of an overarching criminal conspiracy trying to overturn election results for an election he did not win.”

Trump’s false statements about the election in Georgia were central to the alleged conspiracy, Wakeford added. “It’s not that the defendant has been hauled into a courtroom because the prosecution doesn’t like what he said. … He’s being prosecuted for lying to the government.”