Corrupt Democrats launch legal attacks against Trump's former chief of staff

State officials in a majority Democrat area within the state of Georgia have issued criminal charges against Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

His crime? Pretty much just doing his normal job.
As chief of staff, Mark Meadows routinely arranged calls and meetings for the former President Trump.

Meadows is now officially being accused of "being part of a criminal conspiracy", because in some of those calls and meetings, Trump allegedly tried to sway the results of the election in Georgia for U.S. President. The results of the election was very close in Georgia, and supposedly Trump believed fraud was likely involved.

For meadows, this seems insane and is a huge huge stretch of legal logic.
It seems like part of a much wider hunt where Democrats have gone after anyone who was in Trump's inner circle, desperately looking for any possible legal excuse to criminally charge them.
One of the reasons they may be trying to go after Trump's former circle with criminal charges is to be able to put pressure on them to give testimony against Trump (whether that testimony is true or not). It's a common prosecutor's strategy.

The fact that Mark Meadows is being compelled to submit to jurisdiction from a state court, for alleged conduct he allegedly committed in the U.S. White House, as part of his normal duties to the President, is ridiculous. Meadows was not in the state of Georgia and is not in Georgia. Helping the President arrange phone calls and meetings with officials in the state of Georgia is a crime against Georgia, even though Meadows was not in Georgia?
This clearly stretches the bounds of how state jurisdiction is supposed to work.

A federal judge has now denied Meadow's request to move the case out of the state court to federal court.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, in Atlanta, Georgia, was the judge. Explaining the decision, the judge wrote a ruling that to me seems nonsensical. I do not know for sure if this judge actually believes what he wrote in his own opinion. It seems like a legal excuse.
One consideration, a legal reason the Trump-haters may want it to stay in state court is because then a conviction could not be pardoned by a future President, and it seems likely the next President could be from the Republican Party. Another consideration is that, in this case, a move to federal court would result in a jury pool that would include a broader area than just the overwhelmingly Democrat Fulton County.

Judge Jones wrote in his opinion that Meadow's alleged actions did not relate to his role as a federal official.
This seems totally asinine to me. So Meadows is expected to keep track of who he is arranging meetings for and what their position is, and it doesn't fall under his role working as a federal official if he chooses the wrong individuals and does not refuse to perform the task? While legally I suppose a myopic and hypothetical technical argument could be made for that, when it comes to common sense, this seems insane.

Judge denies Mark Meadows’ request to move his Georgia election subversion case to federal court | AP News, Kate Brumback, September 8, 2023

It can be pointed out that the state of Georgia is overall a Republican dominated state, but the county where the prosecutor and these judges is a Democrat area. As for why Republican leaders in the state are not shutting this down, it might be that they are afraid to do anything that could portrayed as corruption, since in recent years it seems Republicans are only staying in power by a narrow margin in the state. They have to appeal to the stupidity of voters, and not give the Democrats anything that could be used against them. I also suspect Republican leaders in Georgia are perfectly willing to throw Trump (and his circle of associates) under the bus. A lot of Republican leaders did not really like Trump, or think he could easily be replaced by someone else.

Maybe this is just my opinion but it really seems like the law is being misused, used very inappropriately. I think that is a fact and not just opinion.
This type of ruling is going to blur the line between what individual state jurisdiction is, and should be.

Judges are so rarely ever held to account for what decisions they make.

And it seems prosecutors know they can easily score guilty verdicts from juries if those juries are in overwhelmingly Democrat areas. This includes the country's capital, Washington D.C., Fulton County, and in the case of Trump, New York City. When a jury already wants to convict, all the prosecutor needs to do is give them an excuse. Among Democrats, there are a huge number that loathe Trump (as a result of a long ongoing media campaign) and would love to send him to prison. It's questionable whether someone connected to Trump would be able to get a fair unbiased trial from a jury in any of these Democrat areas.

 

Shame on the media also.
They are reporting the story and some of the details, but half-heartedly framing it as if there were nothing wrong and this was all perfectly normal and reasonable.

Of course they want to use this story to gloat and try to make Trump look bad by association.

But if anyone is willing to read between the lines, do some of their own independent thinking, I think some will be able to see this for what it is -- some Democrat activists inappropriately using their official positions, combining together, to get political vengeance.

I think the media is not totally completely without ethics or basic common sense, however, because so far they are just framing the facts, in a way to try to avoid portraying the picture of what this is; rather than actually including an opinion or commentary of their own. So I will give them some credit for that. It's dishonest to do what they are doing, but it would be a whole other level of dishonesty to actually give an opinion or interpretation to cover up what they know is wrong. The media at least still has enough integrity not to go that far.

 

You hit the nail on the head, the whole Washington/Georgia thing is a MASSIVE Jurisdiction issue. Not only as it relates to the presence in or about the state of Georgia, but it also relates to whether or not Washington could plausibly bring charges related to the issues that Georgia is prosecuting!

To be blunt and simple about this: Article II empowers the States to nominate the Electors. This is done through the State Legislature. All the Federal Government is tasked with, in to use their own words: A ceremonial affair is to tally said votes. That's it.(the official word is ratify, but it's the same thing.). In other words, it wasn't just Mike Pence that was ceremonial, it was the entire Congress that existed in a ceremonial space(which makes sense, because otherwise, Congress would effectively be more powerful than the then-sitting VP of the US? Nah, they should enjoy universal legal status, and Article II spells out that legal status clearly.)

But when one looks at the indictment, one should notice something particular: Trump is not charged with interfering with their tally/ratification, but rather he is charged with interfering with the nomination! This is a key and crucial distinction. Why? Because the Federal Government has no jurisdiction in the nomination process!

None, zilch, nada. That power is spelled out very clearly to the States under Article II. And since that power is given to the States, it's quite clear that Trump cannot be found guilty of interfering with the government's function, because the government's function is not to nominate the electors, but merely to tally the vote.

The ones who have jurisdiction with regard to the electors(and we see this in the actions of Michigan and Georgia) are the 7 States in question! Because it is their State process that was allegedly tampered with, etc.

As evidence, I present H.R.1. Remember that attempt to federalize the election? Under H.R.1, their legal theory about what happened on 1/6/20 would hold sway. But as we exist right here, now, today under existing state and federal law your honor, the government lacks standing in this case. We don't have a federal election, but 50 separate elections, which sends their results to Washington to be ratified and certified.

 

good to see people be brought to justice for these things

 

Lol…I was just following orders didn’t wash as an excuse in ww2 either.

 

Up until the late 1990s, the state of Georgia was rock solid Republican Conservative. (Now when we say "Conservative" we mean the "Southern" kind of "Conservative" which is a little different from the Midwest or Western Conservative, not necessarily the Libertarian Freedom-loving Conservative, but I don't mean to parse words here)

But demographics in the state have slowly been changing in the state over time, the Atlanta area has grown hugely and sprawled outward, and because the population of the state is over 33% African American, that can sway elections. It's an interesting situation because most of it is not the normal White Progressive Democrat voter; the great majority of these African Americans do not hold any particular contempt against Trump. But they often vote for Democrat leaders who do hate Trump. Republicans haven't lost power in the state yet, but in recent years they have shown willingness to unfairly throw people under the bus to avoid offending the African American voting bloc, which I think shows some desperation on the part of Republicans barely clinging to power.
(Thinking of the refusal to have the political courage to overturn the overly harsh sentences in the Ahmaud Arbery killing case as one example)

Obama (African American Democrat) was able to get 47% of the votes in the state during the 2008 Presidential Election (versus 52.2% for the Republican candidate at the time, McCain). And that same year the incumbent Republican governor also struggled, unable to get at least 50% of the votes, so there had to be a run-off election, something unprecedented for a Deep Southern state.

 

I think you miss the entire point.

Of course I'm not surprised a progressive like you would fail to be able to see the point.
A state prosecutor in Georgia should not be having jurisdictional power over this case. It's a legal (and Constitutional principle), regardless of whether you feel the individual in question is guilty and should be brought to justice (something that is obviously not so clear and unquestionable in this case).

For those who do not live in the U.S. or do not understand how the structure of federalism is supposed to work, state courts are not supposed to have jurisdiction over things that occurred outside their state. That could throw things into chaos, and not be fair for the people being accused either.
There are 50 states in the U.S. with their own separate governments. It would be crazy if any of those prosecutors in any of those states were handed over the legal power to go after people in the nation's capital for alleged political crimes.

 

The ONLY dishonesty to be found in the OP has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Dems.

Meadows ADMITTED under OATH that what he did in GA was CAMPAIGN activities.

So the entire thread is POINTLESS!

Nothing more than an IRRATIONAL screed of DISINFORMATION with a PRETENSE of being "news".

 

Perhaps his little trip to Georgia in 2020 to check on the recount had something to do with it.

 

I actually agree with Democrats that some of the things Trump said, how he worded some things, in the phone calls to state officials in Georgia was wrong and likely constituted undue influence. But to launch criminal charges against Trump and his associates for that is absurd and insane, it stretches common sense and amounts to a political vendetta.

 

It almost seems like a semantic distinction.

Even if he had met with Trump outside of the White House, and it had been totally 100% clear what they were doing had nothing to do with their official federal roles, the state of Georgia should still probably not have jurisdiction over this.

It's not like Trump offered a bribe or explicitly threatened anyone in Georgia. And we are ultimately talking about talking, communication.
(although I know the Left doesn't seem to have much regard for the right to freedom of speech)

Due to the unusual way that U.S. elections for President are held, this almost seems like a gray area. The individual U.S. states each run their own individual elections that will decide who the country's president will be. It almost seems natural that a candidate for President would want to check in with state officials and talk to them if they have any reason to believe there might be fraud going on that could cause them to lose the election, although there are also reasons some could argue that is not appropriate.

Trump having been President at the time and Mark Meadows working as a federal employee in the White House is not the main reason why Georgia should not have jurisdiction.

 

It's my interpretation and perspective on the news. Obviously facts in the news are kind of useless without an interpretation.

Unfortunately the media these days can't be trusted to unbiasedly do that. And in fact the news article I linked to did not even bother to give an opinion or explicit interpretation, so it is appropriate to add one.

 

They can probably forget about Meadows flipping.

 

I think that's only half the reason they are going after him.
A lot of these Democrats are very vengeful and looking for any excuse to put Trump in prison, along with any close associates who helped him. Whether or not those individuals actually rightfully deserve to go to prison.

Plus if they can get a conviction on Meadows, it can be used in the media to help make Trump look bad.
It seems to be legally and politically easier to go after lower level former Trump associates than go after Trump himself. Since Trump is a former President and likely future presidential candidate, there will be much more scrutiny and reluctance by many federal officials to go after him. But his former associates seem to have much less protection. In a way, it's sort of like attacking Trump by proxy.

 

If you very much to do with the Trump election campaign, you have a strong chance of getting indicted. It’s the warning Democrats put out to those who oppose them. It sets a terrible precedent.

 

If the state can establish Meadows knew the purpose of the call, he could be in trouble. If it can't, I don't see how Meadows is going to get convicted. Maybe the indicted him with the intention of flipping him if they could.

I don't think a jury is going to accept Trump saying he thought the election was rigged.

Speculation without any evidence.

You won't get anywhere with this one.

I think the judge probably ruled correctly.

Not if you run Trump.

Trump-lovers appear intent upon excusing what the guy did in an effort to steal the 2020 election.

Trump is a political liability, especially in a state like Georgia that's trending left.

I'd stick with opinion.

 

Trump said nothing wrong in the call… the lefty lie that Trump demanded they find him votes is just not true… His words were “”” all I need is to find 11k votes.”

He demanded nothing from no one… but the left as usual try to spin his words….

 

His words don’t have to be ‘spun’…they just have to be listened to…

“During his attempts to pressure Raffensperger into changing the election results, Trump said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes", the minimum number needed to overcome Biden's advantage in Georgia. Trump also tried to intimidate Raffensperger, hinting that Raffensperger and his attorney could face a possible criminal investigation. Trump said, "You know, that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ne-call-to-brad-raffensperger-five-key-points

 

You probably don't remember senator Biden waging a witch hunt against Justice Thomas's confirmation.

 

We'll see what happens with the trials. Maybe your boy will get elected and pardon all of his cronies.

 

Right church, wrong pew? Thomas has been on the take by his own admission. I guess he struggles to get by on $265,600 a year.

 

is not demanding I just want to find 11,780 votes
Where does Trump tell Raffensperger he has to find those votes for him... I just want to find 11,780 votes is not demanding Raffensperger do anything...

Just more liberal lies and misinformation..

 

He’s only “my boy” if he wins the Republican nomination. He’s at the bottom of my list in the primaries. Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson are somewhat above him (off my list’. Right now Nikki Haley is my first choice.

Maybe the Democrats will nominate somebody decent, but I know the chances are very long for that.

 

Did you not read the emboldened section…?? The Stain tells Raffensperger that if HE doesn’t take the action Stain asks for, that it would amount to “a criminal offence”…!

 

Which it theoretically would have, if in fact there were fraudulent votes(there weren't.). In other words, Trump is alleging to Raffensperger the same penalty, which he finds himself charged with in Georgia. This isn't complicated at all. This case is not complicated whatsoever.

The left/prosecutors have muddied this case, as that is the best chance of a conviction of the defendants. But untangling this case, makes it a very simple thing that happened. As the SOS is aware that he's acted lawfully, there's no way he can possibly be intimidated. And Trump, as President is not 'king' as Chutkin elaborated. He doesn't have the power to snap his fingers and the DOJ would file charges based on a state matter. And since the State agrees with Raffensperger, he faces no legal liability whatsoever.

So where is this intimidation? It doesn't exist. It's Trump's speculation based on things that would turn out not to materialize, that everyone around him on that very call acknowledges wouldn't materialize.

It's not "you would be prosecuted if you don't give me these votes.", it's "you would be prosecuted if fraud is found"(which it wasn't.)

If Trump were the type to shut up, a good lawyer could get all these ducks in a row very easily. It's a game of semantics.