The state of Georgia, which had gone red in six straight presidential elections until Trump got dumped in 2020, continues to be the MAGAts’ worst nightmare. Check out what happened to Mark Meadows on Friday, when a federal judge beat him up and slapped him down.
Trump’s former chief of staff had worked hard to abet the 2021 MAGA coup plot, aiding his boss’ fascist quest to overturn the Georgia loss -had he not done so, he recently testified, he would’ve gotten “yelled at” – and that got him indicted, along with Trump and the other accused racketeers, by a Georgia grand jury. He’s been trying all summer to get his trial moved out of the Georgia courts (which televise trials) and into a federal court, by claiming that everything he’d done to meddle in the state’s election was merely part of his federal job.
What a hypocritical weasel this guy is. For reasons I’ll now explain.
Way back in a now-vanished era, it was a core principle of the conservative movement that the federal government shouldn’t meddle with the rights of states to conduct their own affairs. States were empowered, for instance, to run their own elections (as specified by Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution), and the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that states should be free to conduct their own criminal prosecutions of “fraud and corrupt practices.”
Then along came Meadows (who’d cut his teeth in D.C. as a conservative congressman), with his summer contention that federal meddling was actually a great thing. In his bid to get his trial moved out of the Georgia courts, he said that it had been part of his federal job as chief of staff “to make sure that the president is safe and secure,” and therefore he had the right to conspire with Trump to overturn Georgia’s certification of Joe Biden’s statewide win, and therefore his case should be moved to federal court where he could get it dismissed by claiming federal immunity.
But federal judge Steve Jones, in his ruling on Friday, basically scraped Meadows off the sole of his shoe. And, by the way, this ruling doesn’t bode well for the other accused racketeers (starting with Trump) who’d love to move their cases away from the Georgia courts’ TV cameras and the Fulton County jury pool.
You’re probably not a fan of judicial nomenclature, but Jones’ decision is actually a sweet read. For starters, he was highly unimpressed with Meadows’ desperate claim of federal immunity for his state election meddlings. The judge said that whereas Meadows was claiming “state interference with constitutionally protected federal activities,” the truth was the opposite, it was “federal interference with constitutionally protected state actions.”
He pointed out that “the Constitution does not provide any basis for executive branch involvement with state election and post-election procedures…the Framers of the Constitution intended the states to keep for themselves, as provided in the Tenth Amendment, the power to regulate elections.” Yet here was Meadows, claiming (to cite just one example) that he had the right as a federal official to get on the phone with Trump and “solicit” Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, “to violate his oath of office by altering the certified returns” of Biden’s statewide win.
The federal judge said that Meadows’ case doesn’t belong in federal court because his meddlings in Georgia exceeded his federal authority – and, indeed, “when questioned about the scope of his authority, Meadows was unable to explain the limits of his authority.” All told, “the relevant acts” committed by Meadows in Georgia were “outside the scope of Meadows’ federal office” and violated the “state’s right to deal with matters properly within its domain.”
Meadows is appealing the ruling, natch. He shouldn’t get his hopes up, given the fact that our founding document and our highest court have crafted and affirmed the right of states to run their own elections and their own criminal proceedings.
What a laugh it is to see these so-called conservatives trying to use federal muscle to shut down a case that features the federal muscling of state officials to falsify vote tallies. But, lest we forget, these people care not a whit about principles. The MAGA criminal defendants merely lust for power – while seeking only to save their own sorry asses.