Former President Donald Trump had a constitutional right to make false statements about the 2020 election, his lawyers have claimed in court.

In a written submission on Wednesday, they said that the federal election interference case against Trump is based on his alleged “lies” and that lies and false statements are protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The Trump filing relies heavily on a 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Alvarez that says Xavier Alvarez, an elected official, could not be prosecuted for his false claims that he was awarded a congressional medal for bravery. The Supreme Court said that he had a right to lie, including claiming to be a U.S. Marine who had fought for his country.

Trump was indicted on four counts in Washington D.C. for allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

Newsweek sought email comment about the Alvarez case from Trump’s attorneys on Thursday.

Trump’s lawyers said in their submission to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the Alvarez case shows that falsehoods are protected free speech.

They wrote that Trump is accused of lying and allegedly “used those lies as the instruments of his four criminal offenses.”

However, Trump is not accused of “any conduct involved in those crimes other than making, in their view, supposedly false statements about the election’s outcome,” they said.

The filing by Trump lawyers, Todd Blanche and John Lauro, is in support of their motion that the case is unconstitutional.

They accuse prosecutors of “handwaving the First Amendment” when they say that Trump went too far in his assertion that the 2020 election was rigged.

“Rhe prosecution states that President Trump ‘had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the [2020 presidential] election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,’ but claims President Trump violated the law because he allegedly ‘did not stop there,'” they write.

“The prosecution premises its entire case on the notion that President Trump did more than make supposedly ‘false’ claims about the election’s outcome.”

“But the prosecution does not identify any conduct involved in those crimes other than making, in their view, supposedly false statements about the election’s outcome,” it adds.

It says that false statements made during an election campaign are protected by the First Amendment.

“The reason the prosecution does not identify any non-speech or non-advocacy conduct charged in the indictment is that there is none. Every charge in the indictment rests on core acts of political speech and advocacy that lie at the heart of the First Amendment,” it said.

“All these allegations center on the claim that President Trump stated, supposedly falsely, to these state officials that there had been significant fraud in the administration of the election in their states,” it adds.

Numerous times the filing relies on the case of Xavier Alvarez, an elected member of a water district board in California, who identified himself at a 2007 public meeting as a retired U.S. Marine who had been wounded in combat many times and had received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

“I’m a retired Marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001,” Alvarez said at a public meeting of the board. “Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy.”

“None of Alvarez’s claims was true. He never served in the Marine Corps or any branch of the military, was never wounded in combat, and has never received a medal of any kind, including the nation’s highest military award—the Medal of Honor. Alvarez had previously boasted, untruly, that he played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and that he once married a starlet from Mexico,” according to a summation of the case on the U.S. federal courts’ website.

Federal prosecutors charged Alvarez with two counts of violating the Stolen Valor Act and Alvarez claimed in court that lies were protected free speech. The 2006 Stolen Valor Act made it illegal to claim to have won or to wear military medals or ribbons that were not earned.

The case went to the Supreme Court, where Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 6-3 majority, said that content-based restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny and are almost always invalid.

Kennedy wrote that Congress drafted the Stolen Valor Act too broadly, attempting to limit speech that could cause no harm and that criminal punishment for such speech is improper.

“Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth,” Kennedy said, referencing George Orwell’s novel, 1984.