Mark Meadows, a co-defendant in the case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia, spent hours on the witness stand at a hearing on Monday, becoming the first to argue to a federal judge that the case should be removed from state to federal court.
Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, took the stand in Atlanta for more than three hours at the all-day hearing, which ended with U.S. District Judge Steve Jones promising a ruling as soon as possible, CNN reported, noting that Jones acknowledged Meadows’s arraignment was set for Sept. 6.
MARK MEADOWS COURT HEARING IS FIRST BIG TEST FOR FANI WILLIS’S TRUMP RICO CASE
During the hearing, Meadows’s attorneys sought to make the case that the former chief of staff had a “wide range of authority” in the White House and that his actions related to the 2020 election were taken in his capacity as a federal official.
Meadows is facing two felony charges, brought this month by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, over allegations he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Meadows is now aiming to qualify for federal removal under a statute that requires him to show that the charges brought by Willis reference actions that fell within his official job duties. The former chief of staff’s end goal is to see his charges tossed out under the federal defense that his actions were protected by the Constitution’s supremacy clause.
Willis’s indictment “is precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official’s duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits, and that the removal statute shields against,” Meadows argued in his initial removal motion.
Willis filed a response opposing the motion, saying Meadows was not acting in his capacity as a federal official because if he were, it would be a violation of the Hatch Act, a law that requires federal officials to separate their official work from campaign work.
“He doesn’t think anything he does can be touched by the Hatch Act,” Willis’s attorneys said at the hearing, per CNN.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows arrives at federal court in Atlanta for a hearing to try to have his Georgia election interference case moved from state to federal court. pic.twitter.com/fnx7DX5fZX
— Lalee Ibssa (@LaleeIbssa) August 28, 2023
Meadows has been aggressive in seeking federal removal. He was the first of five co-defendants to do so and also filed an emergency motion to prevent his imminent arrest last week because of what he said were his rights to removal.
Jones denied the motion, saying Meadows’s removal request required a hearing. Meadows was then forced to surrender himself to Fulton County Jail, which he did on Thursday. He was quickly released that same day on $100,000 bail.
Trump, the 2024 GOP front-runner, is also expected to try to move his case to federal court. He would still not be able to pardon himself of state charges if reelected to the presidency, but a trial in federal court would require jury selection from a wider area that would be less blue than the immediate vicinity of Fulton County. A federal judge would also preside over the trial, and federal courtroom rules would apply, likely meaning the trial would not be televised.
Meadows’s hearing marks the first test of the removal ability of other co-defendants, especially Trump and former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, who both also previously served in federal office.
The hearing has also shed some light on Willis’s broader case against Meadows and the others. The district attorney had subpoenaed four people to appear for it, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, according to court filings.
In her indictment, Willis noted that Meadows was present on the phone call during which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to flip the outcome of Georgia’s election in Trump’s favor.
Meadows, who arranged the call, was questioned repeatedly by prosecutors about why he would set up a call for Trump about concerns with voter fraud, CNN reported.
“I dealt with the president’s personal position on a number of things. It’s still a part of my job to make sure the president is safe and secure and able to perform his job,” Meadows said, according to the outlet. “Serving the president of the United States is what I do, to be clear.”
Willis subpoenaed two others who were present on the call, Alex Kaufman and Kurt Hilbert, as well as Frances Watson, the lead investigator of 2020 matters for the secretary of state’s office.
A witness list filed toward the end of the hearing showed that only Raffensperger and Hilbert testified.
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Willis had included in her indictment a text Meadows allegedly sent to Watson asking, “Is there a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan. 6 if the trump campaign assist financially?”
Meadows observed during the hearing that Willis’s indictment contained an error and that the text had actually gone to chief of staff Jordan Fuchs, not Watson, according to the Washington Post.
