Federal Judge Tosses Mark Meadows Back To Fulton County Because NO, A-HOLE, RICO WASN'T PART OF YOUR JOB

Boy, bye.

On Friday night, Judge Steve Jones rejected Mark Meadows’ effort to launch himself at the federal judiciary, unceremoniously booting Trump’s former chief of staff back to face the music in Fulton County Superior Court.

Meadows had hoped to remove his RICO prosecution to the Northern District of Georgia on the theory that he was just doing official White House bizniss when he tried to ratfuck swing state elections. Now Judge Jones has tossed his case, and in doing so, massively undermined any future effort by Donald Trump to run this same play himself.

Let’s LAWSPLORE!

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The first thing to understand is that a federal official (or former one) has to convince the court of two things to get himself out of state court: (1) that he has colorable argument that he was acting within the scope of his official duties when he did whatever the state prosecutors are charging him with; and (2) that he has a colorable federal defense.

Now “colorable” just means “plausible,” so Meadows didn’t have to prove that he was acting as White House chief of staff when he did everything alleged in the complaint. He just had to make a minimally credible claim. But as is his wont, Meadows failed to stick the landing.

During an August 28 hearing, he testified that literally anything that occupied the president’s attention was part of his official duties. He simply had to pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to dummy up the vote tally to make it look like Trump won, because, see, it was on his boss’s mind. Similarly, Meadows had to ask if an infusion of campaign cash might speed up a signature audit in Georgia, because Trump was so fixated on electoral fairness that he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Meadows, who literally coordinated the fake electors scheme in Congress, had the nerve to testify that he did all this as part of his official job of easing Trump’s mind and preparing him for a peaceful transition of power.

As Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pointed out, this is nonsense on its face. The Hatch Act explicitly bars executive branch officials from engaging in campaign activity when they’re on the clock. Or as Judge Jones put it, the witness “did not adequately convey the outer limits of his authority, and thus, the Court gives that testimony less weight.”

After the hearing, Judge Jones ordered the parties to brief him on how he should rule if he found that some but not all of the acts alleged in the indictment fell within the scope of Meadows’s official duties. Commentators focused on “Overt Act 6” in support of the conspiracy, in which Meadows texted Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry asking for the cell phone number of the “Leader of the PA Legislature” to give to Trump, an activity which seemed to fall within chief of staff’s job description. Would reference to a single overt act that could be plausibly be part of Meadows’s official duties be enough to secure removal from state court?

In the event, the court ruled that it would not. Judge Jones reasoned that the 161 overt acts described in the indictment were uncharged conduct and that, under Georgia’s expansive RICO law, prosecutors needed only to prove that one coconspirator committed one overt act. Instead he looked to the charges themselves — RICO conspiracy and soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office. And those are not plausibly part of the White House chief of staff’s job duties.

[T]he evidence before the Court overwhelmingly suggests that Meadows was not acting in his scope of executive branch duties during most of the Overt Acts alleged. Even if Meadows took on tasks that mirror the duties that he carried out when acting in his official role as White House Chief of Staff (such as attending meetings, scheduling phone calls, and managing the President’s time) he has failed to demonstrate how the election-related activities that serve as the basis for the charges in the Indictment are related to any of his official acts. As the substance of the overt acts constituted a significant part of Meadows’s testimony and proof of his acting within the scope of his federal office, the Court concludes that based on the factual evidence, Meadows was not acting in the scope of his office for purposes of federal officer removal.

That’s bad news for Meadows, and it’s really bad news for Trump, who clearly hoped to piggyback his own federal removal petition on the strength of his henchman’s filings.

Last week, Trump filed a bizarre “Initial Notice Regarding Removal,” apprising Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that he “may seek removal of his prosecution.” But Trump has only got until September 30 to do it, and clearly his preference was to point to a successful removal petition by Meadows and say “yeah, what he said.” And while Meadows has a decent shot at getting Jones’s ruling reversed by the Eleventh Circuit, that’s just not going to happen before October.

So now Trump will have to make his own case for removal, forcing him to make representations about his own conduct that he’ll then be stuck with. No lawyer on earth is going to put Trump on the witness stand and allow DA Willis to cross examine him — although it would be amazing, and you could sell tickets to it on Pay-Per-View and pay off the national debt.

And because his case will be designated as “related” to the Meadows petition, Trump’s motion to remove is going to wind up in front of Judge Jones, who already made it clear that he thinks the argument for removal is bullshit.

We’ll have to save that third prong on colorable federal defenses for another post. But SPOILER ALERT, this is really not what you want to hear when you’re hoping to convince a judge that you are immune from prosecution under the Supremacy Clause:

Meadows raises a federal officer immunity defense that the Indictment’s charged acts were made under his federal authority and directed at state actions. The Indictment’s associations and acts, as well as Meadows’s presented evidence, however, all indicate that federal officials (or those purporting to act on behalf of federal officials) engaged in post-election activities that clearly fall outside executive authority and expressly within the constitutional gamut of the States.

Assuming jurisdiction over this criminal prosecution would frustrate the purpose of federal officer removal when the state charges allege—not state interference with constitutionally protected federal activities, but—federal interference with constitutionally protected state actions. This result cannot stand in the face of federalism, “a concept which retains vitality and importance in our modern constitutional scheme,” and the Constitution’s express delegation of election activities to States

OUCH. And LOLOLOLOL.

Oh, and PS: Until a federal court actually accepts jurisdiction, state criminal prosecutions proceed apace. The only thing a state court can’t do is enter a final judgment. So, none of these machinations are going to slow DA Willis down in the slightest.

[State of Georgia v. Meadows, Docket via Court Listener]

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