Donald Trump wants a Georgia judge to kill off his indictment, with his lawyers arguing in court that lies aren’t just protected First Amendment Speech—they’re also helpful.

Donald Trump tried to convince a state judge to drop his Georgia election interference case on Thursday, summoning a tortured relationship between falsehoods and truths to make his case.

Trump’s lawyers argued that lies aren’t just protected by the First Amendment; lies are sometimes essential, his lawyers said, at getting to the truth.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    871·
    5 months ago

    Instead, Wakeford said, the judge must consider Trump’s band of misfits “a criminal organization.”

    “It’s not just that he lied over and over and over again… it’s that each of those was employed as criminal activity with criminal intentions,” Wakeford told the judge. “What we have heard here today is an attempt to rewrite the indictment… and he was just a guy asking questions. Not someone who was part of an overarching criminal conspiracy for trying to overturn an election he did not win.”

    A second member of the prosecution team also spoke up: John E. Floyd, the nationally renown RICO expert whom the DA hired to help her build this case against the former president as a racketeering mob takedown. Floyd told the judge that even if Trump’s lies were actually true—and could be considered free speech—in actuality, he still took part in an overarching criminal conspiracy.

    “For purposes of the RICO statute, it doesn’t matter whether that’s First Amendment conduct or not,” he said.

    Oh shit. This looks like the start of the RICO phase, which would be incredible if they can manage to treat it like one big thing… because it is one big thing.