Trump's expected first move in Georgia case should 'be laughed out of the courtroom': experts

One of Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia indictment has already sought to move his case into federal district court – and it's only a matter of time until the former president tries to do the same, experts said Wednesday.

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows argued the charges filed by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis pertained to his official duties, which his lawyers say should get the case removed from state court to the federal level, and legal experts say he might actually have a stronger argument than the former president would, reported The Daily Beast.

“Trump would have to show that the allegations in this case, including phone calls he made to various Georgia officials to attempt to convince them to overturn the election results, were properly within his role as president,” said Mai Ratakonda, an attorney at the election rights group States United Democracy Center.

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Meadows claims that his role in the post-election scheme was retrieving a phone for Trump to call the leader of Pennsylvania's legislature, organizing White House meetings and touring a vote-counting facility, all of which could be considered part of his official duties, while legal experts say Trump has a steeper hill to climb to make the same argument.

“Here, they’ll make the argument that all of this was legitimate concern about the security of the election and he was acting under color of his job as president to just make sure,” said Caren Morrison, a Georgia State University law school professor and former professor. “But obviously the counter-argument to that is: It’s not within the president’s job to tell the vice president not to certify the count or call the secretary of state of Georgia to say, ‘Find me votes or whatever.’”

Trump recently lost a bid to move his New York business fraud into federal court under the same "removal statute," and legal experts say the Georgia case would likely fail as well because it's not really possible to hold a state criminal trial in federal court.

“I don’t see any legitimate reason or legal vehicle to move a state court indictment to federal court,” said Jeffrey M. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Boston College Law School. “It just doesn't happen.”

Trump will likely still try to do it, if only to delay a trial that Willis hopes will take place within six months.

“I hope that any attempt to do so would be laughed out of the courtroom,” Cohen said.