Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working to get the indictment against himself and Former President Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, moved to a federal court.
Meadows is one of the 18 co-defendants that were named in the indictment against Trump for efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. Those co-defendants are accused of scheming to question or litigate the election results, something that has happened in every recent presidential election.
None of that matters to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis who is determined to prosecute Trump and his legal team for daring to question election results.
Willis is a political agent for the Democrat Party and her indictment is the most blatantly indictment that Trump has faced so far. So there is a strong interest among the defendants to get this case moved to a federal court and away from Fulton County.
The Willis indictment is exactly what many Americans thought it would be, a nakedly political hit job designed to do as much damage as possible to Trump's presidential campaign.
Willis's indictment is so crazy that it is using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, otherwise known as the RICO act to target Trump and his lawyers as part of a “criminal enterprise."
Because Trump worked with his lawyers to brainstorm ways to challenge the presidential election results, Willis argues they were engaged in a criminal enterprise.
In a world where a jury agreed to convict Trump's lawyers on RICO charges, that would mean a whole host of lawyers are in the cross hairs as challenging elections is as American as apple pie.
Nonetheless, Meadows isn't taking any chances no matter how insane the charges against him and Trump are. In a 14-page filing on Tuesday, Meadows argued for moving the case based on a possible federal defense.
The filing stated, "Mr. Meadows is entitled to remove this action to federal court because the charges against him plausibly give rise to a federal defense based on his role at all relevant times as the White House Chief of Staff to the President of the United States."
Meadow's isn't just working to get the case moved to the federal level, he's also using his former position as Trump's Chief of Staff to further knock down Willis's indictment.
Meadow's filing argued that the indictment "is precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official’s duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits."
Furthermore, the Trump campaign issued a statement saying that Willis "strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign."
There is no question that the Willis indictment is election interference, but Republicans ought to be careful about that. It's entirely possible that Democrats will find a way to make claiming election interference a crime.
