Attorneys for Mark Meadows will make their case on Monday for why the former Trump White House Chief of Staff should be granted his request to move his Fulton County, Georgia racketeering and election interference trial from state to federal court.
One top legal expert says he believes a large part of the reason Meadows, Trump, and their co-defendants might want to move their trial to federal court is there are cameras in the Georgia courts. Trump has not yet formally requested to move his Georgia trial to federal court.
“There’s a really old law of Congress that says if you’re a federal officer performing a federal function and you have a federal defense, if you’ve been indicted in state court, you can move that to federal court,” former Obama acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Sunday, but added, “It still means the state prosecutors control it all.”
“So for example, if Donald Trump wins in ’24 or some other Republican, he can’t terminate the state prosecution, but it does change things,” Katyal explained. “So most importantly, and this is what I think what Trump cares about the most, there are cameras in Georgia state court rooms, there are not cameras in the federal system.”
“They do not want the American public to see this trial,” Katyal said of Trump, Meadows, and all their co-defendants. “They are scared like vampires of sunlight here.”
“And so I think that’s part of it. Part of it is also to try and manipulate who’s on the jury and things like that. So I don’t think this removal motion that Meadows espoused is going to be successful because it does require you to be performing a federal function. And last time I checked, organizing a coup even if you’re the chief of staff to the President isn’t part of your official job.”
Watch the short clip below or at this link.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license