Almost two weeks after Georgia prosecutor Fannie Willis survived a disqualification challenge, her election interference case against the former President and 14 others resumed for the first time today. Now, at issue, whether the former President and a co-defendant could get the case thrown out on first amendment grounds. Sarah Murray has more on that.

The criminal case against Donald Trump in Georgia. This whole witch hunt should be put out of its misery and dismissed immediately. Inching ahead today, Trump attorney Steve Sadao arguing the indictment against the former President incident should be tossed, claiming Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, like his call to Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger.

All I want to do is this.

I just want to find 11,780 votes.

Were protected under the First Amendment.

Statements, comments, speech, expressive conduct that deals with campaigning or elections has always been found to be at the zenith of protected speech. Take out the political speech, no criminal charges.

Prosecutor is batting back at those arguments.

What he is not allowed to do is employ his speech and his expression and his statements as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate George's Rieca's statute.

He's not being prosecuted for lying. He's being prosecuted for lying to the government.

It's the first hearing after months of delving into the propriety of Fulton County district attorney Fonie Willis' romantic relationship with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade. You're confused. You think I'm on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I'm not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial. Wade has since resigned from the case while Willis was allowed to remain. But Trump's team is appealing that decision as Judge Scott McAfee moves the case ahead.

Some crimes can be achieved solely through speech, though. Why is that not what's happening here as alleged?

Mcafee didn't rule on whether he'll allow the indictment to stand, but other defendants in the case have tried similar First Amendment arguments and failed. Willis, who did not appear in court today, still angling for Trump and his remaining 14 co-defendants to go to trial before the presidential election, perhaps as soon as August.

I don't feel like we've been slowed down at all. I do think that there are efforts to slow down this train, but the train is coming.

But today's hearing wrapped without any discussion of a potential trial date.

And we'll be ajourn.

Sarah Murray joins us now. Is it clear when the judge might rule on Trump's motion?

Anderson, the judge did not lay out a timeline today for when he was going to rule on whether he should toss the indictment entirely. Obviously, from the district attorney's perspective, they want the judge to make swift decisions on these pre-trial motions that are out there. They have Trump and 14 other defendants to deal with if they want to go to trial by this summer. Again, still no trial date set. Trump's team, of course, is happy to let the judge take all the time he wants there. They want to keep punting this and hope that there's no chance of a trial date before this presidential election in person.

Sir Murray, thanks so much. Perspective now from Michael Moore, a former US attorney for the Middle district of Georgia. Also two former federal prosecutors, Temi Daya Genga-Williams, a former Senior Investigative Counsel on the January sixth Committee, and Ellie Honig. Is there a chance, Ellie, that the former President succeeds on this First Amendment grounds?

Realistically, no, Anderson. Here's why. On the surface, the arguments that we heard Donald Trump's lawyers make today have some superficial appeal. They said, Well, you're allowed under the First Amendment to make false statements. You're allowed to make politically unpopular statements. And that's all he did. The problem with that argument, as the DA's office pointed out is that doesn't jive with the facts here. He did much more than just engage in speech. For example, Donald Trump had official documents submitted to government entities. That's going beyond. That gets into the category of conduct. He arranged and coordinated with others to try to steal this election. I think this judge is going to reject this. It's worth noting that Trump made a similar First Amendment argument in the federal Jack Smith case. That was rejected by the federal judge. That's not binding on the state judge, but I think the state judge is going to come out the same place.

Tell me, he's talking about Judge Chutkin in that case who rejected this argument. Does that have any bearing? Would the judge in the Georgia case take that into account?

For sure. I mean, it's going to be persuasive. And today, in the arguments, the Georgia prosecutor asked the judge, specifically, to look at Judge Chutkin's analysis. He said, I don't think I can do better than she did because it was persuasive. And what she really did was separate the argument of core political speech and whether that is being being moderated by the government versus criminal conduct. For example, you can have a right to have a gun, possess a gun. What you can't do is take that gun and use it in furtherance of a crime. Just because you have a gun legally, it doesn't mean you can rob a bank with it. Same way with political speech, just because you're allowed to say something under our First Amendment, it doesn't mean you can then say those exact statements in furtherance of a crime. That's what Donald Trump is being charged with here. It's speech that he's using in furtherance of a crime. It's not speech for the sake of speech. On top of that, there's more than pure speech. If you're entering into a conspiracy, it's not that you said something political is why you're a conspiracy.

It's because you and your co-conspirators entered into an agreement to do something illegal. So again, it's not pure speech. It's at the heart of the indictment here.

Michael, does it strike you as just another delay tactic from the former president's team on this?

Well, I'm glad to be with all of you. It is really a delay tactic, but it's a very standard practice in a criminal case to have these kinds of motions. So the fact that they had pretrial motions, that they tried to get the indictment dismissed, that they challenged parts of the indictment, that's normal. This is what normal court looks like in a criminal case, except that it happens to be involved in a former president. I do think it's going to delay things. I think the judge probably had his order halfway written because he has ruled on this before, and there is some precedent out there in other courts. He's not bound by that, has been said. But I think that it just is part of the routine process. What he's really waiting on, what's delaying the case, is that there's a pending appeal in the Georgia Court of Appeals from his disqualification order. And of course, you've got the issue of immunity that's pending in the US Supreme Court. Those things are what are going to put the brakes on the case as much as anything else.

How much time do you think he'll take to rule?

He's been pretty prompt, so I think we'll see a ruling certainly within a month, maybe a couple of weeks. And I do think Michael is exactly right. Watching that proceeding today, it was the most normal pretrial motions that you'll see. It happens in every case, and it was refreshing after all the drama that we've seen happening in this case to just see lawyers making the same arguments you would expect to see in any case, arguing them fairly and reasonably and rationally. It was a dignified court proceeding, and I think this case needed some of that.

Timmy Dye, any chance you think this gets to actually start before the election?

I think it's incredibly unlikely, and that's always been true.

This is the complexity of the defendants involved. Exactly.

There are so many defendants here, and we saw in some of the prior hearings we had, when you have these many defendants and each defense lawyer gets to ask a question and stands up. This all just takes a long time. You also have jury selection here, which will take probably months and months and months to even get a jury chosen here. I think it's unlikely we have a trial. On top of that, the judge has indicated that he may split this up even further for multiple trials. I suspect the former President will be in one of those later groups, not an early one. So if I were a betting man, I would say we don't have a trial before the election.

Michael, an attorney for Trump's co-defendant, David Schafer, who's the former chair of the Georgia Republican Party. He asked the This judge to strike the term fake elector from the case, saying it was a legal conclusion. What do you make of that argument?

I don't think he's going to get very far with it. I mean, you don't always want to have conclusory statements in an indictment. Those things should be technically up to the jury. It's not like they're being told now, Here you go. He's actually the fake elector or whatever. I don't know that he'll get far. I will say this. I've watched this trial judge, and he seems to like to split the baby, if you will, and parse some language. It wouldn't surprise me. He said, Well, this might be a better term. I'm going to strike the end of this sentence or something like that. But it's certainly not going to throw the indictment out. That's just not going to happen, I don't believe, at this point. This is nitpicking and cleaning up parts of the indictment and take an issue with some language that the DA chose to put in before the grand jury.

All right, Michael, thanks very much. Wdia, Ellie as well. Thank you so much.