Mark Meadows' legal ploy in Georgia is likely doomed

For the past two years, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows hasn’t exactly been the invisible man. He’s been there to help Republicans figure out how to create House rules that let them spend all day screaming about Hunter Biden’s laptop while avoiding any actual work. Members of the ultra-right Freedom Caucus even talked to Meadows about making him speaker, if only to end Kevin McCarthy’s 15-round embarrassment.

But when it comes to the federal indictments against Donald Trump, tumbleweeds and dust have been blowing through the streets of Meadowsville. Meadows has been treating Trump’s legal woes with the silence of the tomb—or the silence of someone who long ago cut a deal with federal prosecutors and offered up his testimony in exchange for not being made part of Trump’s federal felony indictments for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. It’s far from certain that Meadows has made a deal with the Department of Justice, but evidence just keeps piling up.

However, Meadows was not absent in the indictment turned out by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. In fact, Meadows features in the indictment 14 times, doing everything from soliciting information on false electors in Pennsylvania to helping Trump lean on state officials in Georgia. That was enough to land Meadows two charges in the Georgia indictment, whether or not he made a deal with special counsel Jack Smith’s office.

Now Meadows has used an unusual legal defense in an attempt to slide those cases out of Georgia and back to federal court so he can make them go away. It’s not going to work.