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| Mark Meadows, Former Chief of Staff (NYT) |
This Monday, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was put on the stand in Georgia state court; a risky move made in an attempt to get his racketeering case moved to federal court.
In order to move his case to federal court, the defense must prove that the acts carried out by Meadows, regarding threatening officials in the state of Georgia over votes, were done under his express federal duty, and were not in any way a political act. If he succeeds, the defense can then argue in federal court that due to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which states that federal law trumps state law, his state charges should be dismissed (PBS). This would not only affect his case, but could set an example affecting the cases of the other defendants surrounding Trump's RICO indictment.
Meadows struggled on the stand when state prosecutors pressed him on a phone call he organized between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. When asked about why he organized the phone call, he claimed that he "did not recall" the specific circumstances, and simply followed orders from Trump to set it up. He testified that to his knowledge, the call was regarding alleged election fraud in the state (ABC). In that same call, Trump infamously asked Raffensperger to "find" 12,000 more votes in Georgia, enough for him to win the state, and potentially change the course of the election (WPO), a statement the prosecution interprets as threatening a state official to violate his oath of office, enough to indict Meadows with a racketeering charge.
His unconvincing attempts to distance himself from Trump's conspiracy via lack of recall were further undermined by Raffensperger's own testimony of the phone call and its surrounding events. Raffensperger, a Georgia Republican, testified that he received earlier calls from Meadows--which he avoided--before picking up the phone call with Donald Trump. He further testified that what he expected to be an investigation into election fraud was indicative of "a campaign call"-- an act that would fall well outside of both Meadows' and Trump's federal duty (WPO). He also recalled threats made to his family and his employees when Trump went public with his unfounded allegations of Georgia voter fraud, further implying that the call was not part of Trump's federal duty, but part of his campaign efforts (NYT).
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| A courtroom sketch of Meadows on the stand (CNN) |
5 comments:
Oh my goodness, he might have perjured himself already:
https://www.newsweek.com/mark-meadows-perjury-georgia-fani-willis-fake-elector-1823898
Meadows registered to vote and voted in North Carolina in 2020 even though he didn't live there, and the only reason he's not in trouble for that was a Republican prosecutor declined to prosecute.
The Republican Party has continued to act in bad faith in the past decade, yet nothing's really being done since they hold so much power! Sure, Meadows is being tried in court, but what consequence will he incur? Mr. Silton touched upon this in class briefly, but in 2016, a woman in Texas was sentenced to 5 years in prison because she voted illegally (her vote was deemed illegal because of her classification as a felon). This was obviously a stupidly disproportional and extreme punishment, but the fact that Meadows' future under the legal system is nebulous is insane! Hopefully, he will be tried and given the proper and appropriate sentencing, but given the history of how Republican politicians have been treated, this might not be the case.
I have a feeling this will likely have larger consequences beyond this trial. You have the precedent that this trial could set, where people accused could get their state charges dismissed easily, as long as they could prove that their case has to do with federal law in some way, but there's also the fact that Trump's chief of staff is being accused of trying to fix a federal election. If they actually do manage to find him guilty, this is going to be a huge blow to Trump's campaign and could potentially open the floodgates to the rest of Trump's team, and even Trump himself being put on trial, which could end up disqualifying him from the next elections. The impact that this whole business could have on national politics is immense and will likely reverberate beyond next year's election.
(Sorry for the latency, my original post did not go through because of my account)
I enjoyed how you explained this Satvik, I would definitely only have been able to follow this legal story with a good explanation. It is almost laughable how the Republican party has acted, particularly since the election loss. I like what you said about how Meadows is deliberately warping the meaning of government, to argue it is somehow their duty to keep members of their party in power, even when that means breaking federal and state laws. It is an explicitly unequal and undemocratic argument that goes directly against what we learned recently about the Constitution, that power is derived from the people. Yet in a court of law Meadows is arguing something distinctly unconstitutional. Furthermore, it coincides with a pattern of Republican behavior, following Trump, until it gets them in serious trouble arguing something ridiculous, then even when found guilty, seeing less punishment than someone with $250 of weed in Florida. Hopefully it will not turn out the same in this case.
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