Donald Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Republican leaders argued Monday that an indictment accusing them of conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election should be dismissed under Arizona’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute, barring prosecutions intended to inhibit free exercise of First Amendment rights.

Fourteen of the 16 remaining defendants in Arizona’s “fake electors” case told a Maricopa County judge that the signing and certification of a document assigning Arizona’s 11 electoral votes to Donald Trump rather than President Joe Biden in 2020 was an expression of the defendants’ First Amendment freedoms to petition the government.

“There’s a difference between a group of people committing fraud and a group of people expressing an unpopular political belief,” Michael Columbo, attorney for Republican state Senator Jake Hoffman, told Maricopa Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen Monday afternoon.

In 2022, the state Legislature amended Arizona’s anti-strategic laws against public participation statute — or anti-SLAPP, a concept typically reserved as a response to civil actions seeking to silence free speech — to include criminal prosecutions.