Mark Meadows removal, possible perjury

0:00: Hi everyone, Harry here to talk about the possibly increasingly tight spot and hotter water that Mark Meadows is now in as the judge decides whether he can remove his case. 0:14: So a couple of things have happened, one legal and one you could call factual. Legal, the judge has asked this question. We've got all these overt acts in the indictment. What happens if at least one of them is under Meadows's color of office, a definite sort of chief of staff like thing, is that enough for removal when there are so many ones out there? And the state responded now in a briefing yesterday saying, no, look, that doesn't matter. Overt acts are not essential to the Rico conspiracy charge. They could be any of a number of things, indeed, there are 160 of them here. 0:59: And if you were, we were in that situation where you found overt act number 45 was done clearly in his chief of staff guys, we should just supersede the indictment and take out overt act 45. 1:14: If you're worried about it, but you shouldn't be worried about it because there's one thing that matters and one thing only did he join the Rico conspiracy. There are to lay it out, the indictment alleges this broad conspiracy for everyone and the members of the conspiracy, but not any individual member have to engage in a couple acts of racketeering basically crimes. And otherwise, everyone is just sort of all in on the nefarious goal. And the allegation is Meadows was in on that goal. So if he is, the question and in doing and in being that way, he was not acting on their color of office, then that's all you need to know. Meadows for his part and he is very, very able lawyers followed a brief that basically said yes, otherwise, the prosecutors could always just, monkey around by adding say one thing that isn't done under color of office as an overt act. 2:27: And then the defendant would be stuck. So I think the judge here, Judge Jones may actually be puzzling over this question. Both positions seem a little odd. And I wonder if he'll come to something having to do with either the thrust of the overt acts, not just one or the other, but where they go. Or I think the state's line seems to make sense. What we care about is if he joined the conspiracy over at acts are really sort of incidental. So the, I think the consensus of people who are following this closely is not clear how the judge is going to go on removal at least for Meadows, but a couple of quick points. One is that the other people who followed suit with Meadows and made similar motions are not nearly as strong. So it doesn't mean there'll be a, you know, one, this decision would apply to all with one little asterisk there that I'll get to in a minute. 3:32: And then second, for Meadows, as I've been saying for a while, removal is the battle, not the war. 3:40: He still has to get to immunity. That is, this will tell him, can he be in federal court, but under state law doing everything that he'd otherwise do in state court, what he is really angling for is a ruling that his actions not only were under color of office, but basically that they served a federal purpose and therefore the state can't legally under the constitution and the supremacy clause. Just put him in jail for that or try to do it. But that gets to the other big point, the factual one, because I analyzing the transcript of Meadows hearing, which was closed off, wasn't televised. It appears in a couple junctures that he might have told some fibs. 4:33: And in particular, here there are a few places to point to, but he had said that he played no role in any of the electors, any of the efforts, however you characterize them, to put in other electors for what George says is the false electors scheme and what the Trump campaign wanted to say was, you know, just protecting our rights in the event courts wind up ruling for us. 5:06: Well, that's a really precarious question for Mark Meadows because there doesn't seem to be any plausible federal purpose to munking around in a state campaign like this. He's not there, you know, carrying Donald Trump's briefcase or just being in a, you know, trying to shaperone his time or whatever, he's nakedly exposed to doing something that has no valid purpose under federal law. 5:36: And that, as I see it, would really be fatal for his immunity motion, which is really what he's going for. So I think that's the reason he was caught in, you know, what many people think might be a flagrant lie enough to ground perjury charges. And in any event seems that real sort of tension, because he said, I played no role in any of this elector stuff. And then he was confronted with emails, one in particular from the Georgia prosecutor and then later by his own attorney, because they had to fess up where it just shows him coordinating at least the overall coordination of the state elector stuff. And he had to eat that. And so he, you know, it made him look really bad. But it also made an opening for the judge to basically decide that, you know, I don't credit your testimony. 6:32: I don't think it was truthful, you know, all in all, especially about purpose. And that would be a way for the judge to rule that, you know, that everything, there's no removal. If people concluded in this way, the judge would conclude there's no removal. But also he'd be really dirtyed up going forward. I think the United States won't cooperate with the perjurer. He could be charged. 7:00: Now to my mind is not quite that clean, this alleged perjury, and he can try to wriggle out of it. 7:07: But it definitely puts him somewhat in the soup and gives the court another possibility for rejecting the removal petition. Now the court says it's going to decide this pretty soon. 7:20: September 6 is when the arrangements are otherwise scheduled. And I think that the judge, Judge Jones, would be aiming for that. And I just want to underscore that the standard for removal pretty low in the 11th Circuit, especially and a lot of deference to the district court. 7:41: And I think as people are puzzling through this, you can get the flavor if you put it all together that it could go either way on removal. We'll see. Certainly it's not a layup for the state, as I've kind of said from the start. But also the big game is what we'll follow with quickly on the heels if he gets removal, which is immunity. And there he's going to be in trouble. Because there's not just the perjury problem, but the fact that he basically fesses up to doing things that have no federal purpose. And that's going to make it much harder to get immunity. So should be within a few days. One final point. There's some suggestion out here. Here's another on several questions. If Meadows goes that way, there's some suggestion that everybody goes with them, that when you, when one valid, when one defendant is a valedict for removal, the whole wild mad criminal crew goes over to federal court. That'll be the next question to be faced. 8:50: But quite a lot for Meadows in particular. Secondly, for Trump. And then for the whole gang is riding on this a little removal petition. So stay tuned. Talk to you later. 9:10: Thanks for tuning in. 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