A federal judge rejected former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s motion to hear state racketeering charges from Georgia in federal court.
The ruling is a victory for Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, who initiated the racketeering prosecution.
Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia ruled at the end of the business day on Sept. 8 that the case should be sent back to Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta because he lacked jurisdiction in the matter.
Judge Jones was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Mr. Meadows argued that because his involvement in the disputed presidential election in Georgia was related to his job as a White House official, his case should be tried in federal court.
He contended that he was immune from state prosecution under the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which elevates federal law over state law, because whatever he did was done in his official capacity as a federal officer, so he had federal defenses available to him.
“Having considered the arguments and evidence, the Court concludes that Meadows has not met his burden. Therefore, the Court declines to assume jurisdiction over the State’s criminal prosecution of Meadows ... and remands the case to Fulton County Superior Court.”
The decision came after the judge asked the defense and state prosecutors to provide a supplemental post-hearing briefing as to whether he could hear the case in federal court if he found that a single overt act Mr. Meadows committed was protected by federal law. Eight overt acts were attributed to Mr. Meadows in the indictment.
In his ruling, Judge Jones wrote that some of the overt acts Mr. Meadows is accused of in the indictment were within the scope of his duties as a federal officer but other acts were not.
“Jurisdiction is not conferred simply because a single overt act relates to Meadows’s federal office. After all, the Indictment alleges a series of associative acts spanning over a year, and the overt acts attributed to Meadows span three months,” the judge wrote.
“Undoubtedly, during that time Meadows performed actions for or that related to the color of his office. But the relevant inquiry is what activities go [to] the heart of Meadows’s participation in the enterprise and whether those activities relate to the scope of his federal office. If they do not, then Meadows cannot satisfy his burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction under the federal officer removal statute,” he wrote.
The court found that Mr. Meadows’s “political activities,” such as “working with or working for the Trump campaign” exceeded “the outer limits of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff.”
Judge Jones also noted, “When questioned about the scope of his authority, Meadows was unable to explain the limits of his authority.”
Because the “procedures States utilize to conduct elections and ensure results are not part of the executive branch’s role or power ... Meadows cannot have acted in his role as a federal officer with respect to any efforts to influence, interfere with, disrupt, oversee, or change state elections: those activities are expressly delegated to the States.”
Prosecutors have focused on what was said in a Jan. 2, 2021, telephone conversation between President Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state, in which they discussed, among other things, the vote count in the state and what options the two officials had available to them. Prosecutors say President Trump and others unlawfully attempted to interfere in the electoral process, an accusation he adamantly denies.
Judge Jones found that the telephone call “was made regarding private litigation brought by [the] President and his campaign against the State of Georgia“ and was therefore ”outside Meadows’s federal role as an executive branch officer.”
The judge concluded that there was “insufficient evidence to establish that the gravamen, or a heavy majority of overt acts alleged against Meadows relate to his role as White House Chief of Staff.”
He added, “The State has put forth evidence that at various points during the time of the alleged conspiracy Meadows worked with the Trump campaign, which he admitted was outside of the role of the White House Chief of Staff.”
Of the four criminal cases against former President Donald Trump and his fellow defendants this year, this is the first in which substantive arguments have been made in court.
Some liken the motion for removal to federal court to a mini-trial for President Trump and his co-defendants and speculate that the treatment Mr. Meadows receives in federal court will be a bellwether for how the various Trump-related prosecutions will proceed.
President Trump, Mr. Meadows, and 17 co-defendants were indicted by a state grand jury in Fulton County on Aug. 14 over the former president’s challenge to the election in Georgia.
Several co-defendants have also filed notices of removal in Judge Jones’s court. President Trump filed a notice with the court on Sept. 7 indicating that he may seek removal to federal court.
Judge Jones’s new ruling may suggest he isn’t inclined to grant the other removal motions.
Mr. Meadows and all the defendants in the case are accused of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act from Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election, to Sept. 15, 2022. The indictment states that the defendants “unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in, directly and indirectly, such [illegal] enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.”
It was unclear at press time whether Mr. Meadows planned to appeal the decision to return the case to state court. An appeal would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which has a reputation as a conservative court. Emergency applications arising out of the circuit court’s decisions would be directed to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that court’s leading conservative, who oversees the 11th Circuit.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment on Judge Jones’s new order to District Attorney Willis’s office. Jeff DiSantis, deputy district attorney in the media relations division, hadn’t responded as of press time.
The Epoch Times also asked Mr. Meadows’s attorney, George J. Terwilliger III, who works for the law firm of McGuire Woods in Washington, to comment but hadn’t received a reply as of press time.
