Closing summary
Miami mayor Francis Suarez became the first Republican contender to drop out of the race for the party’s presidential nomination, days after failing to qualify for the first debate. Meanwhile in Georgia, a judge announced he would on 20 September consider whether two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election subversion case can be tried in federal, rather than state, court. The question is emerging as one of the key arguments in the case’s early stages, with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows testifying yesterday at a hearing that will determine whether he is tried in federal court.
Here’s what else happened today:
Prosecutor Fani Willis is proposing that all 19 people she indicted for trying to overturn Georgia’s elections in 2020 – including Trump – go to trial in October. Expect much more legal wrangling over this issue in the days to come.
Tennessee lawmakers were called into special session to pass gun control measures after a mass shooting, but instead spent their time fighting amongst themselves.
Steve Scalise, the second-highest ranking Republican in the House, announced he is receiving treatment after being diagnosed with blood cancer.
Kevin McCarthy is leaning towards opening an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden when Congress gets back to work next month, even though he lacks majority support for the effort among his own lawmakers.
Ron DeSantis is back in Florida as the Sunshine state girds for the arrival of Hurricane Idalia on its Gulf coast.
Georgia prosecutor pushes for rapid trials in election meddling case
Politico reports that Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who last week charged Donald Trump and 18 other people with crimes related to trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, is asking that all defendants’ trials begin quickly, potentially as soon as October:
JUST IN: DA Fani WILLIS is asking the judge in the Trump racketeering case to fast-track all 19 of the defenants — not just Ken Chesebro — while permitting the others to file motions to sever from the larger case.https://t.co/T9r46He7dO pic.twitter.com/a1vii1Zwys
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 29, 2023
She cites the case of Kenneth Chesebro, a former attorney for Trump, who last week requested that his trial be resolved quickly. That led judge Scott McAfee to release a schedule which will see proceedings begin on 23 October, a schedule Willis is asking him to replicate for the other defendants.
However, Trump and some other co-defendants have signaled they have no intention of seeing their cases resolved quickly, and are pushing to have them tried in federal, rather than state, court. Thus, it seems likely at least of their attorneys will object to Willis’s motion.
Updated
Meanwhile in the Tennessee statehouse, a scuffle broke out between the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives and two Democratic lawmakers who were earlier this year expelled from their seats:
Chaos at the end of the Tennessee House special session, where Republicans adjourned without passing meaningful gun reform.
— The Recount (@therecount) August 29, 2023
Rep. Justin Pearson (D) then approaches Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) with a sign, and Sexton and his security/staff physically push past him. pic.twitter.com/YJSiv7RJTV
In that video, you can see Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who were both removed from office by Republicans earlier this year after participating in a protest on the floor of the chamber, but are now back in their seats after winning special elections.
Republican governor Bill Lee had called the legislature into special session to pass gun control measures following a shooting at a Nashville elementary school that killed six people, three of which were children. However, the Associated Press reports that the GOP-dominated legislature failed to pass any of the proposed measures, and spent most of their time fighting amongst themselves before adjourning today.
Judge asks for more details to decide if Mark Meadows can be tried in federal court
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that judge Steve Jones is asking both prosecutors and attorneys for Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to provide more details as he weighs whether to move his case to federal court:
New: US judge Steve Jones in ND Georgia enters new order for Mark Meadows — asks parties to brief on whether a finding that at least one of the overt acts in the Fulton County RICO indictment was under the color of his office, be sufficient to remove to federal court
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 29, 2023
Jones: "Would a finding that at least one (but not all) of the overt acts charged occurred under the color of Meadows’s office, be sufficient for federal removal? The Parties shall file supplemental briefing by 5:00 p.m., Thursday" https://t.co/8kLO7nrzhG
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 29, 2023
In a hearing yesterday, Meadows said that he traveled to Georgia and met with officials there as part of his duties as Trump’s chief of staff, and his attorneys argue that means he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court. It’s unclear whether Jones’s request is indicative of which way he may ultimately rule, but legal experts say Meadows could benefit from a potentially more Republican-friendly jury pool if his trial takes place at the federal level.
The Associated Press has taken a closer look at one of the defenses attorneys of Donald Trump who were indicted alongside him in Fulton county, Georgia, are expected to make: that they were only doing their jobs.
Lawyers figure prominently among the 18 other defendants facing charges in the Georgia election subversion case. In the weeks after his November 2020 election loss, the Trump campaign enlisted a number of attorneys in their attempts to get Joe Biden’s victory in key states disrupted or thrown out. But did their conduct itself break the law?
It will likely take several juries to resolve that question, but the AP reports it’s not unheard of:
As John Eastman prepared to surrender to Georgia authorities last week for an indictment related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, he issued a statement denouncing the criminal case as targeting attorneys “for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients.”
Another defendant, Rudy Giuliani, struck a similar note, saying he was being indicted for his work as Donald Trump’s attorney. “I never thought I’d get indicted for being a lawyer,” he lamented.
The 18 defendants charged alongside Trump in this month’s racketeering indictment in Fulton County include more than a half-dozen lawyers. And the statements from Eastman and Giuliani provide early foreshadowing of at least one of the defenses they seem poised to raise: that they were merely doing their jobs as attorneys when they maneuvered on Trump’s behalf to undo the results of that election.
The argument suggests a desire to turn at least part of the sprawling prosecution into a referendum on the boundaries of ethical lawyering in a case that highlights anew how Trump’s own attorneys have become entangled over the years in his own legal problems.
But while attorneys do have wide berth to advance untested or unconventional positions, experts say a “lawyers being lawyers” defense will be challenging to pull off, to the extent prosecutors can directly link the indicted lawyers to criminal schemes alleged in the indictment. That includes efforts to line up fake electors in Georgia and other states to falsely assert that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, had won their respective contests.
“The law books are replete with examples of lawyers who were disciplined for claiming they were representing their clients,” said Barry Richard, who represented George W. Bush’s winning presidential campaign in 2000 in a dispute ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. “Lawyers are required to follow very stringent rules of propriety. And there are certain things you can’t do for your clients.”
Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis, the prosecutor in the election subversion case against Donald Trump and 18 codefendants, alleges that Sidney Powell was part of a team that stole voting data from the voting machines of Georgia’s Coffee county board of elections.
PBS.org reports that:
In doing so, she “entered into an agreement” with a “Georgia-based forensic data firm” that she contracted to help access the data in the election equipment, the indictment alleges.
On December 18 [2020], Trump and other alleged co-conspirators met and discussed ways to overturn the results of the election, according to the indictment. Among their alleged plans were appointing Powell special counsel and “seizing voting equipment.”
After that meeting, Powell emailed the firm, SullivanStrickler LLC, indicating that she and other unnamed co-conspirators should “receive a copy of all data” obtained by the firm from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan, according to the indictment.
In Georgia, the indictment alleges that Powell entered into a contract with Sullivan Strickler, whose employees set out to remove and examine voting data, from Dominion Voting Systems, tamper with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines, and remove official ballots from Coffee County polling locations in December 2020 and January 2021.
Willis also says Powell lied in a May 2022 deposition before the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, saying that she “didn’t have any role in really setting up” the efforts to access the voting data in Coffee County or in Michigan, didn’t know what happened and couldn’t remember whether the effort was led by Giuliani or others.”
Powell in the fall of 2020 became infamous for vowing to “release the Kraken” (a giant mythical sea monster that attacks ships) in the vain Trumpist mission to show that he had not really lost the election.
Sidney Powell was charged earlier this month alongside 18 other co-defendants, with Donald Trump at the top of that heap, in the Georgia state case, where all the defendants are accused of violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) – ie organized crime.
Then each co-defendant also faces a variety of other charges, some with more counts against them than others. In addition to breaking the Rico law, Powell is also accused of “conspiracy to defraud the state” and other crimes related to conspiracy to commit election fraud and conspiracy to commit computer theft and computer fraud.
Powell is an attorney, a former federal prosecutor and a conspiracy theorist. She and Rudy Giuliani led the legal fight to challenge Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the November 2020 presidential election.
But by late November of that year she was proclaiming such outlandish election fraud claims that even the Trump campaign unmoored itself from her, at a time when Trump was losing lawsuit after lawsuit filed across numerous states.
As we published at the time, among other bizarre claims “she incorrectly suggested that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities was located in Germany, that voting software used by Georgia and other states was created at the direction of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and that votes for Trump had probably been switched in favour of Biden. However, her contributions that day [of a bizarre press conference] were largely overshadowed by Giuliani’s hair dye malfunction.
And she became a butt of late night TV.
Trump co-defendant Powell pleads not guilty
Sidney Powell, an attorney and one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion criminal case, has just entered a plea of not guilty in the court in Fulton county, where the case is happening.
Powell waived a formal arraignment and so, instead of turning up in court, she pleaded not guilty via a court filing, Reuters reports.
Powell was among the band of alleged racketeers who turned up as ordered at the jail in Atlanta last week where the co-defendants were all booked and had their mugshots taken and released to the public.
Here’s a reminder of the background to the case.
Updated
The day so far
Miami mayor Francis Suarez became the first Republican contender to drop out of the race for the party’s presidential nomination, days after failing to qualify for the first debate. Meanwhile in Georgia, a judge announced he would on 20 September consider whether two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election subversion case can be tried in federal, rather than state, court. The question is emerging as one of the key arguments in the case’s early stages, with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows testifying yesterday at a hearing that will determine whether he is tried in federal court.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Steve Scalise, the second-highest ranking Republican in the House, announced he is receiving treatment after being diagnosed with blood cancer.
Kevin McCarthy is leaning towards opening an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden when Congress gets back to work next month, even though he lacks majority support for the effort among his own lawmakers.
Ron DeSantis is back in Florida as the Sunshine state girds for the arrival of Hurricane Idalia on its Gulf coast.
Miami mayor Francis Suarez becomes first candidate to quit race for GOP presidential nomination
Miami mayor Francis Suarez announced he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, becoming the first candidate to do so:
Running for President of the United States has been one of the greatest honors of my life. This country has given so much to my family and me. The prospect of giving back at the highest levels of public service is a motivator if not a calling. Throughout this process, I have met…
— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) August 29, 2023
Suarez announced his campaign in June but appeared to receive relatively little support, and failed to qualify for last week’s debate between GOP primary contenders.
House speaker McCarthy wishes Scalise 'speedy treatment' after blood cancer diagnosis
Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has released a statement of support for Steve Scalise, his top deputy in leadership who today announced he would start receiving treatment following a blood cancer diagnosis:
Steve is a dear friend, and anyone who knows him knows he’s a faith-filled fighter who can overcome any obstacle that stands in his way. I spoke with him today and he’s in good spirits, as nothing — not a gunshot and certainly not cancer — will stop him from accomplishing what he sets his mind to.
House Republicans are proud to have the Legend from Louisiana as our Majority Leader. I wish him a speedy treatment as we continue to work together to get our country back on track and keep our Commitment to America.
I invite everyone in the nation to keep Steve and his family in your prayers.
Judge sets 20 September hearing for Trump co-defendants' federal trial request
Two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case will on 20 September go before a judge as they argue to be tried in federal, rather than state, court, Politico reports:
JUST IN: Judge Steve Jones has ordered an evidentiary hearing for two more of Trump's Georgia codefendants seeking to move their cases to federal court.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 29, 2023
David Shafer and Cathleen Latham — who both posed as electors — will make their case on 9/20.
Yesterday, Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows appeared on the witness stand as his lawyers argued for his trial to be moved to the federal level, which could have a number of advantages for his defense, including a potentially more conservative jury pool.
The two co-defendants who will argue their case on 20 September are David Shafer and Cathleen Latham, Republican officials who also participated in the “fake electors” plot attempted by Trump and his allies in the state.
In other news from Republican-controlled lawmaking bodies, one of the “Tennessee Three” was silenced yesterday by GOP lawmakers after breaking newly enacted rules in the state House chamber.
Justin Jones was one of two Democratic lawmakers who was expelled from the chamber earlier this year after participating in a noisy protest in favor of tighter gun restrictions in Tennessee. Both him and Justin Pearson returned to the chamber after winning their seats back in special elections, but according to the Associated Press, Jones was barred from speaking for the rest of Monday after breaking a new rule that required lawmakers addressing the chamber to talk about the bill being debated.
Here’s more from the AP:
Jones had been criticizing legislation that would have allowed more law enforcement officers in schools and began listing other resources that the state should be providing.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton had warned Jones not to stray off topic. Under new rules adopted by the GOP-dominant chamber last week, members can be silenced anywhere from a day to the rest of the year for not sticking to the bill being debated.
“What our schools need are mental health professionals,” Jones said. “We need funding for mental health, for counselors. We need to pay our teachers better. We don’t need more police in our schools.”
Sexton then ruled Jones out of order, setting up a vote on whether to quiet him for the rest of Monday’s session.
What happened next was a chaotic flurry of legislative proceedings, where Democrats outraged at the decision to move ahead to try to silence Jones for the day began pleading with their GOP colleagues to change their minds. Republican lawmakers remained unconvinced, however, with 70 GOP members voting to silence Jones. Democratic members then angrily left the chamber with Jones.
The crowd, which included gun control advocates urging change in a special session after a deadly Nashville school shooting in March, shouted “fascists” and “racists,” and Sexton ordered troopers to clear out the gallery of the public.
“Look, House rules are House rules,” Sexton told reporters afterward. “We voted on it. Might not like the rules, but the rules are what they are.”
Many in the crowd remained in the stands, and their cries of “vote them out” and “Whose house, our house” drowned out the legislative proceedings for several minutes, enough at one point that a Republican lawmaker said he couldn’t hear what he was supposed to be voting on.
Updated
House GOP still planning Biden impeachment — report
Congress is on recess, but when they return to work on 5 September, House Republicans appear determined to open impeachment proceedings again Joe Biden, CNN reports.
It is sure to be a fraught process for the GOP, and almost certain not to result in the president’s removal from office, since the Democratic majority is unlikely to vote for Biden’s conviction.
Rather, the effort will be more about appeasing House conservatives, who made a splash in January by delaying Kevin McCarthy’s election as House speaker for days until he agreed to their demands. On the flip side of that dynamic, CNN reports that Republican leaders realize a majority of their party does not yet support impeachment, meaning they would have to start the inquiry in the hopes that some of holdouts change their minds.
Expect this to be a big story that will develop over the coming months, and eat up tons of time in the House. Here’s more from CNN:
But leadership recognizes that the entire House Republican conference is not yet sold on the politically risky idea of impeachment. That’s why one of the biggest lingering questions – and something Republicans have been discussing in recent weeks – is whether they would need to hold a floor vote to formally authorize their inquiry, sources say. There is no constitutional requirement that they do so, and Republicans do not currently have the 218 votes needed to open an impeachment inquiry.
Skipping the formal vote, which would be a tough one for many of the party’s more vulnerable and moderate members, would allow Republicans to get the ball rolling on an inquiry while giving leadership more time to convince the rest of the conference to get on board with impeachment. During former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, House Democrats ended up voting to both formalize their inquiry and set parameters for the process after initially holding off on doing so amid divisions within their ranks.
“I don’t believe that a vote of the House is required to open an impeachment inquiry,” GOP Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who supports a Biden impeachment and sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN.
Another factor that could complicate the fall timeline for an impeachment inquiry: Government funding expires at the end of September. McCarthy has already signaled they will need a short-term spending patch to keep the government’s lights on, which hardline conservatives have balked at.
Officially moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry could help keep angry conservatives off McCarthy’s back. And the speaker himself has linked the two issues publicly, warning that a government shutdown could hinder House Republicans’ ability to continue their investigations into the Biden administration – a direct appeal to his right flank, and a sign of all the competing pressures that the speaker is facing.
“If we shut down, all of government shuts down. Investigations and everything else,” McCarthy said Sunday on Fox News.
Republicans have pointed to unverified allegations that Biden profited from his son’s foreign business dealings as grounds for impeachment and have also alleged that there was political interference at the Department of Justice in the ongoing Hunter Biden criminal case – neither of which Republicans have been able to prove, which the White House and Democrats have repeatedly stressed. Even some Republicans are still not convinced that they have uncovered any evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the bar for impeachment.
Top House Republican announces blood cancer diagnosis
Steve Scalise, a Republican congressman from Louisiana who is the second-highest ranking lawmaker in the House of Representatives, announced today he is receiving treatment for blood cancer.
“After a few days of not feeling like myself this past week, I had some blood work done. The results uncovered some irregularities and after undergoing additional tests, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a very treatable blood cancer,” Scalise said in a statement.
“I have now begun treatment, which will continue for the next several months. I expect to work through this period and intend to return to Washington, continuing my work as Majority Leader and serving the people of Louisiana’s First Congressional District.”
A top deputy to speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Scalise was among those wounded in 2017 by a gunman who opened fire at a practice for a charity baseball game attended by Republican lawmakers. He later said he feared the injury would keep him from continuing to serve in the House, and that it reinforced his opposition to gun control measures.
And here’s video of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s comments on the approaching Hurricane Idalia:
Gov. DeSantis (R-FL), when asked how long he expects to stay in Florida and off the campaign trail due to Hurricane Idalia:
— The Recount (@therecount) August 29, 2023
“You remember Ian. We were in the midst of a governor campaign…You do what you need to do...It'll be no different than what we did during Hurricane Ian.” pic.twitter.com/jUax4u0DIV
Hurricane Idalia’s ill winds could be blowing some good for Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis as he takes a break from the presidential campaign trail to oversee storm preparations in his state.
The Republican, who is sinking in the race for his party’s nomination, has become an almost permanent fixture on national TV during his emergency briefings, drawing far more exposure than had he remained on the stump in Iowa and South Carolina.
He was asked about it at his morning press conference in Tallahassee, and replied with a word soup that essentially said it’s no big deal:
With Hurricane Ian [which struck Florida last September] we were in the midst of a governor’s campaign. I had all kinds of stuff scheduled, not just in Florida, around the country. You know, we were doing different things. And do what you need to do.
It’s going to be no different than what we did during Ian. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic… we do what we need to do, because it’s just something that’s important, but it’s no different than what we’ve done in the past.
In his place on the campaign trail, DeSantis has left his wife and chief surrogate Casey DeSantis to speak for him. At South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan’s Faith and Freedom event in Anderson on Monday night, attendees were treated to a stirring speech about her children’s romp through the governor’s mansion:
Ron Desantis actually has to work a few days since we have a hurricane coming, so Casey went in his place to SC. Things went pretty much as I expected. pic.twitter.com/5mGsuoHAmU
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 29, 2023
The ill will towards Donald Trump in Georgia extends even into the Republican party, with the state’s lieutenant governor blaming him for a host of issues and saying voters would be foolish to nominate him again, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary.
“As Republicans, that dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles, telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday.
“Ninety-one indictments,” Duncan said. “Fake Republican, a trillion dollars’ worth of debt [from his time in the White House], everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of a … more like an axe murderer than a president.
“We need to do something right here, right now. This is either our pivot point or our last gasp as Republicans.”
Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in 2020, an effort now the subject of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Last week, Atlantans were greeted with the spectacle of Donald Trump’s motorcade heading to the Fulton county jail, where the ex-president was formally arrested and then released after being indicted in the Georgia election subversion case.
Most Americans will remember the day for the mugshot it produced, the first ever taken of a former US president, but the Washington Post reports that for residents of the Atlanta neighborhood his lengthy and heavily guarded convoy passed through, it was a unique and emotionally conflicted experience.
“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” 39-year-old Lovell Riddle told the Post, referring to the local jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”
Here’s more from their report:
The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr, was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
Updated
Speaking of courts, conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at a conference yesterday, where she declined to weigh in on efforts pushed by Democrats to force the judges to adopt a code of ethics. That’s unlike fellow conservative Samuel Alito, who spoke out forcefully against the campaign. Here’s the Associated Press with the full report:
The US supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett told attendees at a judicial conference in Wisconsin that she welcomed public scrutiny of the court. But she stopped short of commenting on whether she thinks the court should change how it operates in the face of recent criticism.
Barrett did not offer any opinion – or speak directly about – recent calls for the justices to institute an official code of conduct.
She took questions from Diane Sykes, chief judge of the seventh US circuit court, at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and court personnel. The event came at a time when public trust in the court is at a 50-year low following a series of polarizing rulings, including the overturning of Roe v Wade and federal abortion protections last year.
Barrett did not mention the ethics issues that have dogged some justices – including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the liberal Sonia Sotomayor.
“Public scrutiny is welcome,” Barrett said. “Increasing and enhancing civics education is welcome.”
Here are some thoughts from former US attorney Barb McQuade on why Mark Meadows wants to be tried in federal court, and whether his motion will succeed:
2 Why seek removal? Federal court offers a larger jury pool that draws from predominantly Republican areas, no TV cameras in the courtroom, and nicer prisons, but the real reason is to assert governmental immunity and get the whole case dismissed. And Trump will tag along.
— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) August 29, 2023
3 The legal standard is not simply whether the defendant was a federal official at the time of the alleged conduct, but whether he was acting within the scope of his official duties. Meadows seemed to fall far short of meeting that standard.
— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) August 29, 2023
4 He argued that arranging phone calls and meetings for the president was part of his job, but that is not the only inquiry. You have to look at the nature of those calls and meetings. Here, that work was clearly political, and not governmental.
— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) August 29, 2023
Meadows's bid to move Georgia trial to federal court could have wide implications for case
Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.
Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.
The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.
For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
“There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
Updated
First Trump co-defendant pleads not guilty in Georgia as defense gets under way
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last week brought shock and spectacle to the political scene in the form of Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, resulting in the group traveling to Atlanta to be formally arrested and have their mugshots taken – yes, even Trump. Now the case enters the more mundane territory typical of all legal defenses. Yesterday, the first of Trump’s co-defendant’s, attorney Ray Smith, entered a not guilty plea in the case, waiving an arraignment that is scheduled to take place for Trump and the others on 6 September.
Meanwhile, we are awaiting a ruling after Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent Monday in court, arguing that he should be tried in the Georgia case at the federal rather than the sate level. The judge’s decision could come at any time (though may not arrive for a few days), and if he rules in Meadows’s favor, it could open him up to new defenses and potentially a more conservative jury pool.
Here’s what’s going on today:
The Biden administration just announced 10 drugs that it will seek to negotiate the prices paid under Medicare, in part of a major push to reduce health care costs for older Americans. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold an event to announce the effort at 2pm eastern time.
An excerpt of the first major book about Biden’s presidency has just been released, concerning how the president handled the chaotic and controversial withdrawal of Afghanistan.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes questions from reporters at 1pm ET.
