Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is asking a federal court to dismiss Georgia state criminal charges against him stemming from former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to a court document.
Just FYI this is fairly routine to file motion for dismissal and similar ones.
Don’t start with the whole “how could he?!?”, it’s basically a formality in most cases.
Yep. And this one in particular everyone was expecting.
On a cursory glance the argument may make some sense, however taking part it a conspiracy isn’t a protected action. As long as there is a half competent judge hearing this motion it shouldn’t last long.
Specifically, this motion has to come pretrial. Immunity cannot be a defense during trial, and it must be made to be appealed later even when the judge disagrees.
So they’re legit going with attempting to overthrow an election was “within the reasonable scope of their duties”.
Bold move, lets see how it plays out.
Go big or go to the big house! Who-rah, Am-err-eh-kaw!
Paywalled but isn’t he trying to get his charges heard in Federal Court instead of State? If that’s what this is (“dismissing charges” only in that they are being dismissed in one venue to be heard in a different venue) it’s a pretty misleading headline.
State and federal charges aren’t the same thing. He can be charged at the federal level for federal crimes and at the state level for state crimes.
He is simultaneously trying to get the charges dismissed and if that’s not successful then get them moved to a federal court.
Since he broke laws at both the state and federal level, but he is only been charged at the state level, The federal indictment would need to happen before it would even be possible to change the venue or argue jurisdictional conflicts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is asking a federal court to dismiss Georgia state criminal charges against him stemming from former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to a court document.
A 37-page document filed on Saturday with a U.S. district court in Georgia asserts that Meadows’ actions are protected by the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution under which federal officials are immune from state prosecution for acts committed within the reasonable scope of their duties.
The filing came days after Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, sought to have the case brought against him moved from Georgia’s Fulton County to federal court.
Meadows and Trump were among 19 defendants named last week in a sweeping 41-count Georgia grand jury indictment claiming they “knowingly and willfully” took part in a conspiracy to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in the state.
The indictment alleges that Meadows helped fuel the conspiracy by making false statements about the election and conspired with Trump to develop a plan to disrupt and delay the congressional certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
It also alleges that he tried to pressure a chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office to speed up the Fulton County signature verification and that he took part in a phone call in which Trump pushed Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state.
The original article contains 339 words, the summary contains 250 words. Saved 26%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Uh … that’s not how that works, Mark.
These are state charges. They cannot, right now, simply be dismissed by a federal court. That he was a federal employee at the time of the alleged offense(s), and that the actions cited in the indictment in Georgia are ostensibly actions taken in the course of his job as a federal employee gives him grounds to request that the trial be removed to federal court, and I think that part is likely to happen. After that, his defense team can motion for dismissal, which I believe the federal court judge would have the authority to do at that time, if it is ruled so.
The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, which Meadows’ defense is citing as the reason the federal courts should dismiss his state charges, doesn’t prohibit “state prosecution for acts committed within the reasonable scope of their [federal] duties.” It only says that federal law takes precedence over state law. There is no conflict between federal and state law in Meadows’ case.
Fucking hell, I’m not even a lawyer, and this is obviously hot garbage.
This is basically all incorrect from a legal (and logical) standpoint. His motion is proper, but very unlikely to be successful due to his alleged actions falling outside of the reasonable execution of his duties as the COS to the President.
I’m being generous. I think his actions were with full knowledge that he was participating in an attempt to illegally overturn a fair election, but no court has made that determination yet. At present, his actions can be described as part of his role as WHCoS if he is not guilty, and since there is a presumption of innocence prior to conviction, that’s what it is right now.
Lol, traitor cunt.
