Trump co-defendant Jeffrey Clark denied bid to move Georgia RICO case to federal court

Jeffrey Clark, the former Department of Justice official who is a co-defendant in former President Donald Trump’s Georgia racketeering case, lost his bid to move his case to federal court on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones said in an order that federal court had no jurisdiction over Clark’s case. The news came just before it was announced Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall became the first co-defendant to plead guilty.

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Clark, one of 18 co-defendants, specifically was charged with one count of racketeering and one count of an attempt to commit false statements over a letter he allegedly tried to send to Georgia officials in 2020 falsely representing that the DOJ had “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” in Georgia.

Clark, a former Trump-appointed assistant attorney general, argued he was acting in his official capacity at the time the letter was drafted; however, Jones concluded that the act did not fall within the scope of his job duties.

AP

“The letter pertained to election fraud and election interference concerns that were outside the gamut of his federal office,” Jones wrote. “Consequently, Clark has not shown the required nexus for federal officer removal.”

Jones’s decision marks a small victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who had opposed Clark’s move, saying he had no authority in his official capacity to write the letter in question.

“The defendant sought to peddle a lie and place the imprimatur of the Department of Justice upon that lie,” Willis wrote in a court filing. “He was told by the chief officers of the DOJ that his claim was a lie, that he did not have authority to make the claim at all, and that it was not the DOJ’s role to make such a claim, but he persisted in attempting to send the letter containing his claim anyway.”

Federal removal has possible benefits for the co-defendants in the case. Jury selection in the U.S. district court would occur among a larger and slightly more Trump-friendly pool than that of Fulton County. A federal judge would also preside over the case, and the trial would not be televised, per federal court rules.

The decision for Clark’s case to remain in Fulton County Superior Court follows Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows losing his federal removal bid this month. Meadows has appealed the decision, and the case is now before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Trump, who some had expected would also attempt to transfer his case to federal court, revealed in a notice on Thursday that he would in fact keep his case within Fulton County.

Trump’s attorney wrote that the decision was based on a “well-founded confidence that this honorable court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia.”