Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, has testified for nearly three hours in a hearing to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court on Monday.
Meadows was charged alongside Trump and 17 other defendants for conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in a Georgia superior court. He faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer.
But Meadows is arguing that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
According to the indictment, Meadows arranged the infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, where the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to block Biden’s victory.
He also at one point instructed a White House aide to draft a strategy memo for “disrupting and delaying” the electoral certification process on 6 January 2021, according to the indictment. Yet Meadows denied doing that on Monday, calling it the “biggest surprise”.
Meadows testified for about three hours on Monday, surprising legal experts who widely expected him to keep mum.
“Those were challenging times, bluntly,” said Meadows, testifying about his time as Trump’s chief of staff during the pandemic and through the 2020 election, according to CNN. “I don’t know if anyone was fully prepared for that type of job.”
He also testified that his duties involved sitting in on nearly all of Trump’s meetings, which he would help arrange with various states and agencies, according to ABC News. “There was a political component to everything that we did,” said Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
Willis subpoenaed Raffensperger, along with his office’s chief investigator Frances Watson, to testify during the Monday hearing.
According to the indictment, Meadows asked Watson if there was “a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially”. He claimed on Monday that he was not trying to offer federal funds but rather asking if there was a financial constraint.
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Meadows was booked at the Fulton county jail after voluntarily surrendering last Thursday. He filed an emergency motion to block his arrest but a judge denied his request. Meadows was released shortly after arriving at the jail, earlier entering a $100,000 bail agreement.
Moments before Meadows’ federal court hearing, Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the Fulton county election interference case, said all 19 defendants would be arraigned on 6 September in 15-minute increments. Meadows is set to be arraigned at 10.30am local time, following Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.
Three other defendants have filed motions to remove their cases from Fulton county. Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official, along with Georgia fake electors David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, are each seeking to move their cases to federal court.
Trump is expected to file a similar request in the coming weeks.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
