"Your interpretation is not what's at issue here," Cabou said, adding that Warren's actions were the focus of the lawsuit.

But Keefe refused to back down.

Allowing prosecutors to refuse to enforce laws would create "chaos and anarchy" in the criminal-justice system, he said.

Cabou also asked Keefe if he ever questioned Warren about his approach to the controversial issues.

Keefe said he never communicated with anyone at the state attorney's office, including by phone or email, until the day Warren was suspended.

Warren earlier Tuesday said he learned of his suspension in an email while he was with a grand jury working on a murder case that his office had solved after nearly three decades.

Keefe — accompanied by two sheriff's deputies in uniforms — handed Warren a "partial copy" of the executive order in which DeSantis suspended Warren, who asked if he could review it. Keefe said no, according to Warren.

"The whole conversation lasted three minutes," Warren said, adding that Keefe instructed the deputies to escort Warren out of the building.

When asked what he would have told Keefe if he were asked about the joint statements, Warren said he would have explained that "the two policies … were not blanket policies" and "were not policies of the office."

Warren's attorneys have argued that the governor overstepped his authority by suspending Warren and that the joint statements are "protected speech."

During opening arguments Tuesday, Cabou told Hinkle that DeSantis suspended Warren "because of what he said and what he believes and because they're different from what the governor believes."

But George Levesque, an attorney who represents DeSantis, argued that the Republican governor suspended Warren "because he was refusing to enforce the law."

Warren's stance against the 15-week abortion restriction was "tantamount to a veto of state law," Levesque argued. "Mr. Warren believes that he can be a law unto himself, choosing which laws are just and which laws he chooses to enforce," Levesque added.

Warren and his supporters have maintained that DeSantis' suspension was crafted to score political points with conservative voters.

Warren's attorneys on Tuesday pointed to a Twitter post by Christina Pushaw, who at the time was a spokeswoman for DeSantis, the night before Warren's suspension was announced.

"Prepare for the liberal media meltdown of the year," Pushaw, who later went to work for DeSantis' re-election campaign, tweeted on Aug. 3.

Levesque said Tuesday that Pushaw "was taken to the proverbial woodshed" for the post.

Warren's suspension and subsequent lawsuit have drawn national attention, with more than 100 legal scholars and dozens of former judges, prosecutors and police chiefs decrying the governor's actions in friend-of-the-court briefs.

"We are fighting for free speech, for the integrity of our elections and for the very values of our democracy," Warren told reporters before the trial began Tuesday.