The first major hearing in the case over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is happening Monday — and how it plays out could shape how Trump’s trial ultimately unfolds.
The hearing concerns whether one of the defendants, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, should be tried in federal court instead of state court. Meadows, one of 19 defendants in the case, has argued that the case needs to be heard in federal court because he’s protected by the US Constitution’s supremacy clause, which shields federal officials from state prosecution over acts committed while performing their duties. Federal, not state, courts have jurisdiction over constitutional issues.
He argues that he acted in his official capacity when he helped coordinate between Trump and state election officials on legal strategies and false theories of election fraud. Though Meadows has not laid out any other reasons for wanting to move his trial, it is possible his team believes a federal jury would be more sympathetic to his case than one based in Fulton County, which tends to favor Democrats in elections. A federal trial would likely have a jury pulled from a broader cross-section of the state.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, however, wants the case remanded to state court. The danger of moving the case to federal court is that Willis could be forced to prosecute each defendant separately, over a longer than ideal period of time, rather than in one big case. She’s already encountered a hiccup in that respect, given that Kenneth Chesebro, a former member of Trump’s legal team who advanced a plan to install fake electors in Georgia, has been allowed a speedy trial scheduled for the end of October, before any other defendants in the case will be tried.
Other defendants’ cases may be broken off; Georgia Republicans David Shafer and Shawn Still, who were part of Trump’s scheme to install fake electors in…
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