No. of Recommendations: 12
A federal judge in Arizona issued a ruling in a motion filed by Mark Meadows which should have (in a normal world, anyway) predictive powers in the larger cases against Trump. As in Georgia, Meadows filed motions in Arizona federal court to have his pending Arizona state criminal charges moved to federal court under the premise that all of his actions involved in his indictments reflected his official duties in an appointed position in the federal government.
The federal judge hearing Meadows' motion rejected it soundly, explicitly stating none of the actions in his indictment had ANY relation to his official duties in the White House. The Washington Post summarized it this way:
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In Monday’s ruling, the Arizona court found that Meadows had failed to "demonstrate that the conduct charged in the state’s prosecution relates to his former color of office as Chief of Staff to the President."
"Although the Court credits Mr. Meadows’s theory that the Chief of Staff is responsible for acting as the President’s gatekeeper, that conclusion does not create a causal nexus between Mr. Meadows’s official authority and the charged conduct," the court concluded.
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From what I can gather on the internets, rulings in motions for changes in venue or removal of a case from state to federal court are not subject to appeal. That makes this bad news for Meadows because the judge's written ruling not only rejected Meadow's argument about the claims made by Meadows about his job duties at the time but clearly state his accused actions have nothing to do with his federal duties.
That aspect of the ruling may be particularly ominous for Trump because Meadows and Trump are tied to the same actions indicted as crimes. If you have a federal judge going on record as stating those actions are unrelated to the official duties of the White House, in normal times one would presume the same logic would hold for Trump as well.
Of course, we are not living in normal times and we don't have a reasonably functioning judicial system so the same issue could be litigated again in another court in another district, reach the same conclusion then get appealed to the Supreme Court and land on a different answer simply because the name after the "v." is different.
WTH
