often. and when that s the case, they ought to be held liable. there ought to be a private right of action for anybody dissuaded or sometold something false. what they say, that s fine, as long as what they are doing is not deceptive. it s fraud in our state and we will prosecute people for that. one beat on that before we move on. it s largely their claim to have this right, is largely based on rifra, right, religious freedom and making their argument from a religious perspective. how do you counter that free speech argument? you are basing yours on a consumer fraud act. i understand that. as you face the first amendment question? well, it s just like the case against president trump. you have a right to free speech, but you don t have a right to lie. you don t have a right to use those lies to push people into situations in which they,
i d happily have and break that story i m telling you. we don t evidence where there s evidence in terms of what the former president did. you might have some idea of what evidence they may have in terms of why the president s mindset was, because you testified to this issue specifically. what s your sense to that poppy s point of what more they have. i agree with the attorney general, i think there s more here, the shakiest part of this indictment is going to be the mindset and whether or not he actually believed the election. this free speech argument actually i think is a very shallow and weak argument. when it gets into fraudulent behavior and conspiracy that s action, that s conduct, not a matter of speech. i know that donald trump knew he
protestors here and there, but really nothing significant. though i am seeing some raised voices behind me and we ll drill down on what is dg on there. if i hear anything more, i ll bring it to you. and let s talk about the free speech argument being made by the defense. because there are definite limits to free speech when it comes to an underlying conspiracy. a lot of limits to free speech. so the argument may resonate in political circles, there is a technical legal word for that argument in court. think about it, let s say peter baker and i wanted to run an investment fraud scheme and we made represent fashions to you and we took your money based on those false representations. and we gambled it away at a casino. that is not protected speech, but not protected speech, there is no first amendment protected speech designed to commit a
doubt that trump didn t believe there was widespread fraud. i think this is going to be laid out in court. i m not sure how compelling an argument this is free speech is going to be because the there has always been limits on free speech. mindset they ll lean into pretty heavily and that depends on what other evidence the justice department has. we have no idea. we don t know what evidence they have. a lot more about that going forward, publicly and politically, you ll hear this free speech argument, it s something that excites the base and a lot of republicans feel like they can come and defend a lot of this for republicans has been bluntly contorting themselves, i m talking about elected officials and some pundits to contort something they condemned in realtime as
it s interesting, as in the documents case, there s not a real defense to the facts being offered by trump s side that i can find, but one of the things he s hit behind is free speech. he doesn t charge free speech. he has a right to say whatever he wanted. he charges the acts and something that was always clear, you know, from the outset we pieced it together, then the congressional committee went and investigated it, but what is crystal clear from this document is trump directs the fake electors plot. trump and everybody involved calls them fake because they know they re a fraud. they re knowingly in emails, texts and conversations and contemporaneous notes person trading a fraud. there s a keystones cops element to it that might have misdirected folks at the beginning, but it s so flagrant on paper. yeah. one of the things i loved about the indictment yesterday was just knocking out the free speech argument on page 2 of the indictment and saying, that s not what we re charging you