Mark Meadows, ex-chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, wants to move his charges in the Arizona “fake electors” case to federal court, a Wednesday court filing stated.
This will be Meadows’s second attempt to do so, and his legal counsel will argue his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff, and they will seek dismissal of the charges.
It’s also possible Meadows wants to move his case to federal court to have a failsafe in case he is convicted: Trump’s pardon, if he is elected. The former president will have the power to pardon Meadows in a federal, but not state, case if he is reelected.
U.S. District Judge John Tuchi, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, has scheduled a Sept. 5 hearing to consider Meadows’s request. Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia for his role in an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election’s results.
Mel McDonald, a former county judge in metro Phoenix who also served as the U.S. attorney for Arizona during Ronald Reagan’s first term, told the Associated Press that he believes Meadows has the best chance of any defendant in the Arizona electors case to move their case to federal court.
He thinks that because the allegations center on a federal election and because of Meadows’s work as a federal official. “It does have some federal fingerprints on it,” McDonald said.
While Meadows isn’t alleged to have worked with the fake electors directly, prosecutors said Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his loss to Biden.
The Arizona indictment also says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election.
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Meadows tried to get his Georgia case moved to federal court last year, but his request was rejected by a judge and an appeals court. He’s asked the Supreme Court to review the decision.
In their filing, Meadows’s attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people “trying to get ideas in front of President Trump or seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”
