Latest court ruling is 'very bad for Mark Meadows' and Trump: ex-prosecutors
Mark Meadows has two options after losing an appeal to move his Georgia election interference case to federal court, and neither of them are good, legal experts said Monday.
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade told MSNBC's Ana Cabrera that Meadows can either appeal the decision to the Supreme Court or negotiate a plea agreement.
"It is a significant decision," said McQuade.
McQuade also argued Judge William Pryor's quick turnaround on a ruling — oral arguments were Friday and the ruling arrived Monday — did not bode well for the outcome of either choice.
"I think there was an expectation we would see the weeks go by before we got a decision from the court of appeals," McQuade said. "We get it the very next business day. I think that shows the resounding defeat that Meadows has been handed here."
Meadows is one of 14 co-defendants named in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' racketeering case centered on the 2020 election.
While four of the original 19 have negotiated plea deals with Willis, Meadows remains, despite his attempts to have his case bumped to federal court.
"I think that this signals anybody else who might try to remove that case out of state court and into federal court would suffer a similar fate," McQuade said. "In fact, Donald Trump did not even seem to try to go down this route."
In his ruling to keep the case in-state, Pryor argued Meadow's alleged actions did not relate to his official duties as Trump's chief of staff, which former FBI general counsel and senior prosecutor Andrew Weissmann argued is significant.
"Even if you are currently sitting in the Oval Office and in the White House, that does not make it official business," Weissmann said. "The office of the White House does not have any stake in who the next president will be. That is just a campaign activity, not an official duty of somebody who is either chief of staff or the president."
Weissmann argued this ruling does not bode well for Trump, who has repeatedly argued his actions were protected as official conduct undertaken by the nation's highest public official.
The former prosecutor believes both the Supreme and D.C. Circuit courts will consider this ruling when deciding the question of Trump's immunity.
"You now have two separate circuit courts saying that's not what's at issue here," Weissmann said. "So, very good day for the government, both federal and state."
See the discussion in the two videos below or at the link here.
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