Former Georgia assistant district attorney and public defender Chandelle Summer told Newsmax Monday that changing the Georgia case against former President Donald Trump and his then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from state court to federal court would be “a game changer.”
“This is a game changer for the case,” Summer said during “Wake Up America” Monday. “Mark Meadows is asking that his state court action that's in Fulton County be removed to federal court under the federal court’s removal jurisdiction.”
She said that federal law allows federal courts to take on state cases involving federal employees carrying out their normal job duties.
“Back in the Civil War days, when the federal agents were coming down and collecting taxes from the states, the states were kind of not happy about that, and we're locking those federal agents up,” she said. “So, the federal government passed a law that said if you're doing federal work and a state prosecutor, you can remove that case to a federal court where we will obtain jurisdiction.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a grand jury indicted Trump, Meadows, and 17 others on racketeering and other charges for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election.
Summer said that the move to federal court, while not impacting the evidence the state would bring against the defendants, would allow for a larger jury pool, which could benefit Meadows and any of the other 18 people charged in the indictment.
Summer said that most of the jury pool in Fulton County voted for Democrats, making it hard to get a fair trial in that state court, while voters in some of the surrounding counties that would make up a federal jury pool lean more Republican, allowing for a better mix for the defendants.
“I think if I were the judge in the case, I think acting in an abundance of caution, I would go ahead and remove it,” she said. “It's not going to make a lot of difference in terms of the presentation of the evidence. It's still the same case. It's just that in Georgia, Fulton County has a reputation for being sort of highly Democratic. They vote as Democrats, [and] they generally vote for the Democratic candidate for president.”
She said that by pulling jurors from around 10 different counties outlying Fulton, you would get a “larger swath” of jurors, including people from counties that voted 80% for Trump in 2020.
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