A judge Friday denied attempts by three “fake electors” charged in Georgia alongside former President Trump to move their charges to federal court, finding they were not federal officials.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones’s rulings round out the remaining defendants who attempted to move their cases. Jones had already rejected attempts by two other defendants in the case.
His decisions mean that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) entire prosecution is set to move ahead in state court, where the proceedings will be televised, unless any defendant succeeds on appeal.
In three separate, yet similar rulings, Jones said the fake electors — David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham — could not claim they were acting as federal officials when they met in the Georgia state capitol in December 2020 and signed documents purporting to be the state’s electors.
“The Court finds that Shafer was not a federal officer when operating as a Republican-nominated presidential elector,” Jones, an Obama appointee, wrote in Shafer’s case.
The trio are charged with racketeering, forgery and false statements, among other counts. They pleaded not guilty, alongside Trump and the other defendants in the case.
Moving courts would have provided them a pathway to try to assert constitutional immunity from the charges. It also would have broadened the jury pool to less heavily Democratic areas of Georgia beyond deep-blue Fulton County.
Jones previously denied requests from Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move courts, though he is appealing. Earlier Friday, the judge denied a similar request from Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.
But while Jones had acknowledged Clark and Meadows had indisputably shown the first of three prongs necessary to make the move — that they were federal officers — he said the three pro-Trump electors couldn’t even clear that initial hurdle.
The defendants had also argued that, even if they were not federal officers themselves, they were at minimum acting under the direction of other federal officers like Trump and his attorneys.
Jones squarely rejected that argument, too, saying that the pro-Trump electors meeting was taken “at least in part, to advance President Trump’s and the Trump campaign’s bid for reelection, which is unofficial conduct.”
“Based on the evidence presented—namely, the email received from the attorneys in question and the transcript of the Republican-nominated presidential electors’ meeting—the Court concludes that any acts taken under the guidance of these attorneys were not acts taken under federal officers,” Jones wrote in each of the three rulings.
Trump on Thursday indicated he would not file a request to move his charges to federal court.