Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ request to transfer his Georgia election interference case to federal court was denied by a federal judge on Friday.
According to rollcall, the Georgia racketeering case accuses former President Donald Trump and others of acting as a “criminal organization” as they attempted to invalidate the Georgia 2020 presidential election results. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a former Republican House member from North Carolina, is facing two criminal charges in the case.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was charged with soliciting an official to violate their oath as well as a more general conspiracy. He then pushed to have the charges dropped and to transfer the case to federal court. In court documents, Meadows’ attorneys claimed that his actions were consistent with his responsibilities as chief of staff.
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The court had to determine whether the former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ actions were related to his federal role, according to U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia. However, Jones wrote that Meadows hadn’t met the burden of proof to show that his criminal prosecution could be removed under the “federal officer removal statute.”
As CNN stated in their article, the actions at the center of the State’s accusations against Meadows were carried out on behalf of the Trump campaign with the ultimate aim of influencing state election activities and procedures, Jones wrote in the order. This was proven by the evidence presented at the hearing. “Meadows himself testified that serving as the Trump campaign’s chief of staff would fall outside of his remit.”
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, whose office is prosecuting the RICO case, benefits from the decision. Her office had fought the former chief of staff Mark Meadows’ efforts to have the case heard in federal court.