Court denies Trump co-defendants' attempt to move election case

ATLANTA — The federal appeals court in Atlanta on Thursday rejected attempts by four defendants in the Fulton County election interference case to move their case to federal court.

The four co-defendants of GOP nominee Donald Trump had sought to remove their criminal racketeering case out of Fulton Superior Court to the U.S. District Court a few blocks away in downtown Atlanta. A removal would give the defendants a slightly more conservative jury pool that encompasses a wide swath of metro Atlanta, not just Fulton County.

In one decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against three defendants: former state GOP party chair David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham. Their attorneys had argued their clients were acting as federal officials when they met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast Electoral College ballots and sign paperwork proclaiming that Trump had won the state.

Even though multiple vote counts had showed that Democrat Joe Biden was the winner, the GOP electors were told before the vote they were preserving Trump’s options in case it was later determined he actually won here in Georgia.

In a separate opinion, the same panel of judges ruled against former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who also sought to move his case out of Fulton County. Clark’s attorney had argued his alleged criminal conduct related directly to his work at the Justice Department as well as for former President Donald Trump.

All four defendants were appealing September 2023 decisions by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones denying their attempts to remove their cases.

The 11th Circuit’s ruling addressing the three GOP electors’ appeal said that “Shafer, Still and Latham are not entitled to removal because, even if nominated electors could be federal officers under the removal statute, the statute does not apply to former officers.”

The judges said they had to adhere to a ruling last December in which the 11th Circuit made a similar finding when rejecting former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ attempt to remove his case to federal court. (Meadows was among the 19 defendants initially indicted in the Fulton racketeering case.)

In a concurring opinion, Judge Robin Rosenbaum said there was no basis for Shafer, Still and Latham to be classified as official electors because the people of Georgia never voted for them to hold such positions.

“Nor does the purported position of ‘contingently elected presidential elector’ exist in the Constitution or federal or state law,” she said. “And defendants were no more presidential electors simply because they give themselves the title than Martin Sheen was ever the President because he went by President Bartlet (on the TV show ‘The West Wing’).”

In addressing Clark’s attempt to remove his case, the same three-judge panel denied his appeal by noting he too is a former federal official, not a current one.

The racketeering case against Trump and his 14 remaining co-defendants is on hold while the Georgia Court of Appeals considers whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from the case because of her romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade and a church speech she gave in the days after the relationship was disclosed. The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments on Dec. 5.