Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump's Chiefs of Staff in the White House in late 2020, will continue to face criminal charges in Arizona state court. U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi today declined to accept Meadows' effort to remove the case to federal court.
In a 15-page Order, Tuchi finds that Meadows filed his Notice of Removal more than two weeks past the deadline, and did not present good cause for that tardiness. Meadows had claimed that he was waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Trump immunity case. However, Tuchi decided that that was not a reason for not filing the Notice on time.
The judge went on to consider the substantive issue behind Meadows' request, anyway. Tuchi noted that Arizona's indictment of Meadows was because of his alleged activities in furthering the plan to have Arizona Republicans come up with a false declaration of their electors being Arizona's official electors. Therefore, Meadows' description of his Chief of Staff duties of simply being a liaison to the President did not hold water. "Mr. Meadows has not so much removed the State’s indictment as rewritten it," he wrote.
"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.7 Therefore, because the Court concludes that the conduct charged in the State’s prosecution does not relate to Mr. Meadows’s color of former office, the Court must remand this case to state court for want of subject-matter jurisdiction."
Trial in the state court for Meadows and the Arizona's alleged "fake electors" is set for January, 2026.
This article was reported by AZ Law founder Paul Weich.
"AZ Law" includes articles, commentaries and updates about opinions from the Arizona Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court, as well as trial and appellate courts, etc. AZ Law is founded by Phoenix attorney Paul Weich, and joins Arizona's Politics on the internet.
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