POLITICS
Mark Meadows Testifies In Georgia, Seeking To Move His Election Interference Trial To Federal Court
Courtesy of markmeadows/Instagram
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows testified in a Georgia court on Monday in an attempt to have his trial, in which he is charged alongside former President Donald Trump and 17 others, moved from state to federal court.
Meadows was indicted by a grand jury along with 18 others on charges including racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which is normally associated with mobsters, over their alleged efforts to overturn the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election.
The grand jury accused Trump of “knowingly, willfully and unlawfully” making false statements on a call in which he “unlawfully” solicited Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help him change Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.
Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff, was also on the Jan. 2, 2021, call, and is also charged with soliciting Raffensperger to violate his oath of office.
The 100-page indictment details other allegations, including the claim that one of Trump’s lawyers attempted to tamper with voting machines and steal data from a voting machine company.
Other defendants include Trump’s former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and lawyers who allegedly strategized overturning the results, including Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said at a news conference announcing the indictment.
In court on Monday, Meadows’ lawyers argued he was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government, and so should be tried in federal court. The prosecution argued that alleged participation in criminal conspiracy is not within the scope of his official duties.
The hearing ended without a decision.
“Mark Meadows claims the actions he took to determine whether a fair election occurred were within his scope as chief of staff. But whether his actions were or weren’t — and they weren’t — his excuse smacks of what we heard from Nazi collaborators following World War II. For his seditious choice, Meadows deserves their same fate,” said attorney and law lecturer Daniel Karon, who is not involved in the case.
“Mark Meadows is clamoring to get his Georgia case into federal court where he’d be prone to pardon if Donald Trump wins the presidency. But for all the noise Trump and his cronies make about honoring the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states. So by trying to drag his case from state court to federal court, Meadows is actually subverting the Constitution, which is his very basis for removal,” Karon said.
But not everyone agrees that the case belongs in state court.
“Willis’s use of RICO was a serious reach and a blatant effort to try and give herself authority, which she really doesn’t have, to try President Trump in her highly partisan jurisdiction,” said Diane Canada, author of “Lady Up & Don’t Quit” and founder of the Lady Up America movement. “The optics she hopes to bring, ahead of the election, couldn’t be more obvious or more self-serving. Moving this to a federal court, where it belongs and where the likelihood of a fair trial, is nothing short of reasonable.”
Trump surrendered himself at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia last week after his legal team and the district attorney’s office agreed on conditions for his release, including a $200,000 cash bond.
Prosecutors proposed a March 4 start date for the trial, the day before Super Tuesday in the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump is an early frontrunner in the Republican primary.
It is the fourth indictment for Trump, who is facing nearly 100 separate criminal charges across all four cases. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
TMX contributed to this article.
