Two co-defendants in the case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia asked Monday night to move their legal proceedings from state to federal court, making them the second and third of 19 co-defendants to do so ahead of the deadline to surrender on Friday.
Former Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark joined former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in filing notices to move their cases to the federal level, which would give them a federal judge and a jury selected from a wider pool than blue Fulton County.
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Federal court proceedings would also be subject to different rules, meaning that proceedings would likely not be televised, whereas a televised trial in Fulton County is possible.
The three co-defendants are all facing racketeering charges for their alleged illegal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, and they laid out in their court filings a number of justifications for why they would be eligible for trial in federal court.
Shafer said the charges against him stem "directly from his service as a Presidential Elector nominee," a matter that would fall under the Constitution and Electoral Count Act. Clark and Meadows both noted that they were federal officials at the time, arguing that they were operating in those capacities in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
A judge has, so far, granted Meadows a hearing for his removal case, which is set to take place in Atlanta next week.
Trump is widely expected to follow a similar path and request removal, but if the process were successful, removal alone would not erase the state charges or burdens for a pardon under the state system.
One legal expert in Georgia opined on social media that Trump would "almost certainly be able to remove the case to Federal Court under the Federal Officer Removal Statute. And sorting that out is going to take a very long time."
Another suggested removal would be problematic for some, such as Shafer, because removal is only allowable for cases "involving public officials & people working for them in certain circumstances. Emphasis on 'officials.' Not candidates. The crimes weren't part of Trump's work as POTUS, they were the campaign, which suggests the case should stay in state court."
Shafer and Clark have not been granted hearings as of this publishing, and they are both expected to surrender at Fulton County Jail by Friday in any case.
Clark made the additional argument in his federal removal notice that approval of the removal "will have the legal effect of removing the entire civil-criminal hybrid case to this Court and preventing the State of Georgia ('State') from proceeding any further" with the case, meaning the state should not seek his arrest.
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At this stage, Trump, who plans to surrender to the jail on Thursday, and others have worked out bond agreements in anticipation of their pretrial releases.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has ambitiously asked for a trial to start in March 2024, but a judge will decide the final start date.