Meadows is facing two criminal counts, accused of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump's legal team may need to come up with a more "creative argument" in defending him as their legal one "ain't working," former Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele said on Saturday.
Steele's comments come after Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows was handed a legal loss on Friday after trying to move his case to a federal court instead of a state one.
The former White House chief of staff is facing two criminal counts, accused of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, along with Trump and 17 other associates of the former president. All 19 defendants from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' indictment have pleaded not guilty to their various charges. Meadows took the stand in Georgia last week to argue that his case should be tried in federal court, given that his actions tied to the indictment fell under his responsibilities as chief of staff.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones wrote in his 49-page filing order on Friday, however, that Meadows' actions fell outside the requirements of a White House chief of staff.
* If the law and the facts are against you, threaten the judge and jurors, double down on everything, and hope your nascent fascistic movement has arrived at its takeoff speed
My worry is that the fash have learned the lesson of the spanking they received on and for the 6th January debacle. They might see that the police will shoot 'em and they will go to jail... unless they win. Then again they haven't shown themselves particularly prone to self reflection or any kind of education, so maybe I'm worrying unduly.
I remember how the Muller investigation and report was fully dodged. I'd give him good odds on getting out of this fully or with a punishment that means nothing to him. I hold no hope for accountability for the rich in the US.
If he gets off that will gives leeway for everyone else to get off as well, This is an all or nothing case.
What gives me some hope, is that it's in (part of) the republican establishment's interest for Trump to go to jail.
That way it becomes very hard for him still to run, he can be replaced by someone more controllable/sensible, but his 'persecution' can be used as a symbol to increase turnout of conservative voters.
I think it's a balance for them. He's unruly and I think they'd be happy to be rid of him, but they want to make sure they don't set precedence for them all to go to jail, too. That's the main reason they want him gone. They've been setting up dominos for decades and Trump is a whirling dervish fucking everything up. Some dominos get knocked down too early, some get interrupted from knocking down the whole path, some just become ineffective. It's hard to build infrastructure around what he does.
And the first win for Trump and his subordinates just happened.
His case rico case was split apart. Now 2 completely different cases, with separate motions will need to be made with every witness testifying twice. It's way way easier to win a rico case if the subordinates and the head actions are split apart.
The whole point if RICO is to link together a series of odd looking but not specifically criminal behaviors. Each action on it's own is hard to put in context. Without the leader and workers being charged together this case went from hard to nearly impossible.
"Trying to help your boss steal an election is not part of the chief of staff's official duties in serving the presidency. Sounds like the work of the campaign at best, a criminal conspiracy at worst, and the judge says it will stay in the courts in Georgia for a decision."
Michael Steele used to be Republican Lt. Gov in Maryland, then was the chair of the GOP campaign in 2008 when John McCain and Sarah Palin were on the ticket.
After he lost his reelection bid for party chair, he went to work for MSNBC as a commentator, and he's been on there all the time ever since.
EDIT to clarify: Steele was not a fan of the proto-MAGA movement represented by Palin on the 2008 ticket and he has been a never-Trumper Republican from the start
Since the rise of Trump in the party, not sure if Steele still a registered Republican.
For the same reason it's being posted here - he said something people want to hear.
It's kinda like this community. If you say "Trump will go to jail!" With no supporting argument you get voted up. If you say something like "Trump may not see jailtime sure to sentencing guidelines and other factors" you get voted down.
There’s literally nothing wrong or even slightly arguable about what you just said, but a third of people taking the time to vote are hitting the down arrow.
Newsweek is bottom-feeding extremely cheap content, re-processing the opinions of afternoon panel show guests.
There is nothings newsworthy, useful, or arguably even ethical about what Newsweek is doing. And, anyone who can’t acknowledge that has had their frontal lobe melted by the past 7 years.
Michael Steele, for all his faults, got a JD from Georgetown, so when it comes to legal issues like this, he does know what he's talking about. Now he might have gotten things mixed up, which I can't really blame him for considering how many indictments there are and how many cases there are, but this is his area of expertise in general.
Substance aside, as someone who grew up with its previous incarnation as one of the two big weekly news magazines, it’s wild to see that Newsweek has taken HuffPost’s model of reporting Twitter as news, and applied it to MSNBC segments.
Given the chud opinion writers I see promoted on the right side of every Newsweek piece, I’m assuming they’re doing the same thing with Fox segments.
Trump's Supreme Court appointees will be more sympathetic.
I'm pretty sure you're correct but I wonder... will they really? They have lifetime appointments. They don't want the US to collapse or fall into fascism or civil war, it's bad for them personally.
I don't really know, because I don't understand how those kind of people think. I'm just some random weirdo on the internet.
Steele's comments come after Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows was handed a legal loss on Friday after trying to move his case to a federal court instead of a state one.
The former White House chief of staff is facing two criminal counts, accused of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, along with Trump and 17 other associates of the former president.
Meadows took the stand in Georgia last week to argue that his case should be tried in federal court, given that his actions tied to the indictment fell under his responsibilities as chief of staff.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones wrote in his 49-page filing order on Friday, however, that Meadows' actions fell outside the requirements of a White House chief of staff.
Steele continued: "But at least you can look at his effort to give Mark Meadows every deference, every opportunity to lay out and make the claim that he was acting as an official of the federal government of the United States when he was on those phone calls.
Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance also said on MSNBC about the ruling on Friday, "Trying to help your boss steal an election is not part of the chief of staff's official duties in serving the presidency.
The original article contains 526 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
But the beauty is, according to Georgia law, that can’t happen until 5 years after they’ve finished serving their sentence.
Now the legislature could change the law, but that’s it as it stands right now, and I’m not sure there’s currently enough support to change it. Currently.
You see what Georgia is doing to the Stop Cop City protesters? There's enough support. It's fucking Georgia. The villains, including Kemp, are keeping schtum until after the judgements are handed down. Anyone not seeing this as clearly as day follows night is only kidding themselves. Ain't kiddin me, tho.