Mark Meadows caught 'pointing the finger' at Trump in his testimony: expert

Goodman’s comments followed Meadows’ testimony at a removal hearing on Monday in which he is seeking to have his case in the Georgia election interference case moved to federal court. Meadows is among 19 co-defendants including Trump who were indicted last month on allegations they tried to overturn the state’s 2020 election. They are being charged under the state’s racketeering law.

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Guest host Brianna Keilar said “when you look at this newly available transcript that we see, the Fulton County DA is trying to pin him down in it, because he, Meadows, emailed about the need for someone to coordinate the people who were the fake electors, and asked about that Meadows tried to explain,” according to a transcript from Monday’s hearing that “it was mentioned to me that there was litigation going on, and that you had to have a provisional or conditional elector, and what I didn't want to happen was for the campaign to prevail in certain areas and then not have this.”

Keilar notes that he was asked “Why did you not want that to happen?”

“Meadow says, ‘well, because I know I would get yelled at if we had not.’"

“‘By whom,’ he's asked and Meadows says ‘by the President of the United States.’”

“How bad is that for Meadows and for Trump, Ryan?” Keilar asked.

“It's very bad. I would imagine that their defense counsel are quite worried about that testimony. It's bad for President Trump, because it is directly pointing the finger at him by saying he would have yelled at me if I didn't do this. That means that President Trump is directly involved in the false elector scheme. That's the kind of evidence that prosecutors need, and it also shows the intensity of President Trump's interest in it,” Goodman said.

“Not only that, but Meadows is saying ‘he would have yelled at me if I didn't do it.’ That alone is also a violation of the Hatch Act. It's not just that President Trump was involved in the false electoral scheme, but he's getting his chief of staff to do it. And the chief of staff knows if I don't do this he's gonna yell at me. That is a Hatch Act violation. One of the one of the only provisions of the Hatch Act that actually do apply to the president. You're not allowed to, as president, tell an employee or intimidate an employee into engaging in political activity on behalf of a candidate. What else is that?“

Goodman believes Meadows probably hurt himself as much as he did the former president in his testimony.

“It's horrible for (Meadows.) His entire argument is based on…that he was taking everything he was doing was within his governmental authority in the Office of the Chief of Staff, but he is saying in his own words, the reason I did this was to preserve an option for the campaign. I didn't want to have it such that the campaign would be left without these provisional electors,” Goodman said.

“That's a pure campaign trying to win the election type issue. There's nothing about the federal government's authority with respect to that particular item and there he is saying at the end of the day, after lunch, after that, quizzed him for the beginning of the entire day in the morning, and here he just admitted at the end that was for purely the idea of trying to preserve Trump's options.”

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