Mark Meadows in a police booking mugshot released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.
Fulton County Sheriff’s Office | via Reuters
A judge on Friday rejected a request by Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to maneuver his Georgia election conspiracy criminal case to federal court in Atlanta.
The choice implies that Meadows’ case will remain in Fulton County Superior Court, a Georgia state court in Atlanta.
Meadows was indicted with Trump and 17 other co-defendants last month by a grand jury in that court on charges related to their efforts to reverse former President Donald Trump’s loss in Georgia’s 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Trump’s lawyer on Thursday told a Fulton County judge in a filing that the previous president might soon seek to have his own case transferred to federal court. 4 other defendants besides Meadows have already got made such requests.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in a lengthy order in Atlanta federal court Friday said that Meadows has not met his burden to indicate that moving his case there from Fulton County court was proper under a statute authorizing removing legal cases against federal officers from state courts.
“The Court concludes that Meadows has not shown that the actions that triggered the State’s prosecution related to his federal office,” wrote Jones, who held a hearing on the request last week.
“Meadows’s alleged association with post-election activities was not related to his role as White House Chief of Staff or his executive branch authority.”
Jones noted that just considered one of the eight allegedly overt criminal acts committed by Meadows, asking Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pennsylvania, for phone numbers for the leaders of Pennsylvania’s legislature on Trump’s behalf “could have occurred inside the scope of Meadows’ federal office.”
“The actions at the guts of the State’s charges against Meadows were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign with an ultimate goal of affecting state election activities and procedures,” Jones wrote.
“Meadows himself testified that working for the Trump campaign could be outside the scope of a White House Chief of Staff,” added Jones, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama.
If any of the opposite defendants do achieve transferring their cases to federal court, they still will face the identical state criminal charges there, and the identical prosecutors from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
Although Jones said in his order that his rejection of Meadows’ removal request wouldn’t affect the identical requests by other defendants, it likely doesn’t bode well for those bids.
Apart from Trump, Meadows was seen by experts as having one of the best shot at transferring the case to federal court because he held a federal post and lived in Washington, D.C. on the time of the alleged crimes.
The federal court in Atlanta is seen as a potentially more favorable venue for the defendants than the state court because its jury pool is drawn from a bigger area, and thus is more likely to include more Republicans.
