(ABC News) Attorneys for Donald Trump said that Trump’s comments “calling into question” the election of 2020 were “the height of political speech,” in arguments seeking the dismissal of the former president’s Georgia election interference case Thursday.
Trump’s lawyers were back in a Fulton County courtroom, where they argued that the election interference charges against Trump should be dismissed because his actions related to the 2020 election were “political speech advocacy that lie at the heart of the First Amendment.”
Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ended the hearing without making any rulings on the motions.
“I don’t think there’s any question that statements, comment, speech, expressive conduct that deals with campaigning or elections has always been found to be at the zenith of protected speech,” Trump attorney Sadow argued, saying that even if Trump’s statements were false, they are protected as a valuable contribution to public discourse.
“The only reason it becomes unprotected in the State’s opinion is because they call it false,” Sadow said.
But prosecutor Donald Wakeford fired back, telling the court that the former president’s speech was part of a conspiracy to commit crimes.
“It’s not just that he lied over and over and over again,” Wakeford said. “It is that each of those was employed as part of criminal activity with criminal intentions. ”
