Trump lawyer makes bizarre argument that lying about the election 'helps realize the truth'

28 March 2024

Former President Donald Trump's Georgia attorney, Steve Sadow, recently tried to persuade Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that his client's lies about the 2020 election are not only constitutionally protected speech, but that they are actually a form of truth-telling.

The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reported that Trump is now trying to get some of his charges in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' initial indictment dismissed based on the First Amendment. The charges of "false statements and writings" relate to the former president's false assertion to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that he won the Peach State by 400,000 votes (he actually lost by more than 11,000 votes), that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in the names of dead residents (which is also false) and that poll worker Ruby Freeman illegally stuffed ballot boxes (another lie that former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was found to have been financially liable for in a defamation suit).

"Campaigning and elections has [sic] always been found to be at the zenith of protected speech. What we have here is election speech," Sadow said in McAfee's courtroom on Thursday. "As Socrates’ methods suggest, examination of a false statement — even if made deliberately to mislead — can promote a form of thought that ultimately helps realize the truth."

The prosecution countered that Trump's lies actively caused harm, and that it was a violation of Georgia state law to lie on official documents. Donald Wakeford, who is Willis' chief prosecutor in her office's anti-corruption division, quipped that it was "interesting to hear counsel for Mr. Trump tell us about the usefulness of lies."

"It’s not that the defendant has been hauled into a courtroom because prosecutors haven’t liked what he said,” Wakeford said. “It does harm to the government. That’s the reason that it’s illegal... it’s not just that you made a false statement. It’s that you swore to it in a court document.”

One of the key parts of the indictment against Trump is the allegation that he illegally pressured state officials to "find 11,780 votes," which would be enough to overturn the election results in Georgia. Wakeford said evidence like the January 2021 call to Raffensberger urging him to undo President Joe Biden's win in the Peach State proved the indictment's description of Trump and his legal team as "a criminal organization."

"It’s not just that he lied over and over and over again... it’s that each of those [lies] was employed as criminal activity with criminal intentions," Wakeford said during the Thursday hearing. "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."

The former president and more than a dozen others are charged with multiple felony counts under the indictment for allegedly interfering in Georgia's presidential election in 2020. Previously, Judge McAfee struck a portion of the indictment, in which six counts relating to solicitation to violate oath of office were removed. McAfee said the indictment's claims were overly broad and could be interpreted in a number of contradictory ways, but invited Willis to clarify the charges in the indictment if she intended to re-file them at a later date.

Trump's Fulton County trial was sidelined for weeks after lawyers representing Trump's co-defendants alleged that Willis was engaging in a conflict of interest by having a relationship with her co-worker, special prosector Nathan Wade. McAfee ruled in Willis' favor, but made it clear that either she or Wade had to step aside from the investigation if it was to continue. Wade tendered his resignation later that day, and Willis accepted. No trial date has yet been set, and it's unknown whether Trump's trial in Georgia will happen prior to the November election.

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