Trump's lawyers said he's a modern-day Galileo Galilei, and that 'crackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true'

• Trump's lawyers likened him to astronomer Galileo Galilei in a court filing on Monday.
• In the legal brief, Trump's lawyers argued that like Galileo, Trump believes in his own truths.

In a new court filing, former President Donald Trump's lawyers likened him to Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.

In the 96-page brief submitted to San Francisco's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump's legal team posited that, like Galileo, Trump is being persecuted for believing in his own truths. The Catholic church branded Galileo a heretic for saying the Earth revolves around the sun.

Trump's team is arguing that it is "correct or at least debatable" that several of Trump's conspiracy theories are accurate. These theories include the baseless claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" from the former president, per Trump's lawyers.

"Most people once believed these to be crackpot ideas; many still do. But crackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The earth does revolve around the sun, and it was Hunter Biden, not Russian disinformation agents, who dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence at a repair shop in Delaware," Trump's legal team wrote.

The lawyers were referencing a Trump-fueled conspiracy theory about the origins and contents of the laptop, which included lurid details about Hunter Biden's life.

"Galileo spent his remaining days under house arrest for spreading heretical ideas, and thousands of dissidents today are arrested or killed by despotic governments eager to suppress ideas they disapprove of," the lawyers wrote. "But this is not the American way."

The filing is part of Trump's lawsuit against Twitter, in which he accused Twitter of censoring him after the January 6 Capitol riot by slapping him with a permanent ban.

The lawsuit was thrown out in May, but Trump's team is attempting to revive the case, citing "overtly partisan censorship."