Mark Meadows Trying to Move AZ Charges to Federal Court

Former Chief of Staff for Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, is taking another crack at moving his charges to a federal court instead of local jurisdiction.

Meadows has already tried this move before, but it failed.

This time, Meadows is trying to have the charges brought against him in Arizona moved in an effort to have the charges dismissed.

Move Them

Meadows is among the nearly two dozen defendants being tried with Trump in Georgia for election interference.

He unsuccessfully tried to have those charges moved to federal court citing the fact that he was a federal employee at the time of the alleged crime.

The situation in Arizona is similar, where Meadows is involved in a “fake electors” case, but he is using the same argument to have the case moved.

The move here is twofold for Meadows.

First, he believes he will have a more lenient judge in a federal case, possibly ruling in favor of dismissing the case.

Second, if he is convicted, he would hope that Trump wins the election so that he can get a pardon from Trump.

The motion will go before U.S. District Judge John Tuchi, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, so I am not expecting a judgment in Meadow’s favor here.

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, does see some daylight here for Meadows.

He recently stated that because federal fingerprints are on the case, he does have a chance, but like I said, we have seen this argument fail before, and with an Obama appointee on the bench, the chances of Meadows winning his argument are slim to none.

While Meadows has not been charged with working directly with the fake electors, he has been charged with conspiring with other Trump campaign staffers to submit the fake names in Arizona (as well as other states) to keep Trump in office.

Meadow’s attorneys have argued that Meadows was not part of any scheme and had only had messages from others “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.”