Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee agreed on Tuesday to hear motions from two co-defendants in the Georgia racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and those who helped him contest the 2020 election. If granted, the motions would see a significant delay in court deadlines that could impact the proposed August 5 trial date.
McAfee agreed to hear motions last week filed by attorneys for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Jeff Clark, who was the acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Apartment Justice during the 2020 election. Both men have filed for the charges against them to be removed from Fulton County to a federal court, and seek to delay Georgia court dates until those decisions are made.
Removal motions from Meadows (pictured above, right) and Clark (pictured above, left) were both denied by a federal judge, but both men filed appeals with the 11th Circuit Court. Meadows’ appeal was granted expedited status, and oral hearings are scheduled for December 15. The appeals court has yet to grant oral hearings for Clark’s appeal, but his filing revealed that the legal process remains ongoing.
In the November 8 filing, Clark’s attorneys noted a number of schedule conflicts between Fulton County, the 11th Circuit, and the Washington, D.C. Bar proceedings launched against him over his legal challenges to the 2020 election.
Noting that the D.C. Bar has refused any attempts to reschedule until after Clark’s criminal trial in Georgia, his lawyers wrote in their motion that the D.C. Bar’s “strange insistence” it must take priority “is explainable by politics and not by the application of neutral principles, including principles of efficiency.”
In Meadows’ filing, submitted on November 14, his attorneys note the forthcoming appearance before the 11th Circuit, and request “a limited extension” in the deadline for discovery production, moving it from December to February.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis recently filed to ask for the trial to begin on August 5, 2024, with the final plea hearing date scheduled for June 21, 2024. In that request, she asked McAfee to refuse any future calls for cases to be severed or delayed until June.
Willis previously confirmed to a group of reporters assembled at the headquarters of The Washington Post that she expects the trial will be live on Election Day in 2024 and may continue until the inauguration on January 20, 2025. However, she insisted she did not consider the political significance of the timing.
In a separate filing, Clark’s attorneys previously asked McAfee to drop the case against him, calling it a “grotesque abuse” of power on behalf of Willis. His concerns seemed to be shared by a group of eight Georgia state senators, who filed a complaint against Willis with Georgia’s new Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission (PAQC), claiming she cherry-picks cases to prosecute based on her political views.
The Georgia Supreme Court refused to approve rules for the PAQC last week, effectively pausing the complaint.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mark Meadows” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
