Mark Meadows has remained a sort of mystery man during the multiple indictments against his old boss, former President Donald Trump. Meadows, whose inside knowledge as Trump’s former chief of staff is presumably invaluable to prosecutors, has kept a relatively low profile during the Trump legal storm of 2023.
But Meadows’s mystery man status was upended when, having avoided being named a target of Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s federal cases against Trump, Meadows was named as an alleged co-conspirator in the Georgia election fraud case brought by Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
[NOTE: The New York Times reported: “While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga.”]
Forced into the light, Meadows still sought some shade from DA Willis — shade which she was adamantly unwilling to grant as evidenced by a brief, ripsnorting reply to Meadows’s attorney, which popular lefty political media figure Rachel Maddow amplified to her 10-plus million X followers, shouting out a Lawrence O’Donnell post about it.
Yours in Service https://t.co/elKdrnNGSI
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) August 22, 2023
In a letter to Meadows’s lawyer John S. Moran, Willis rejected a request to extend the timeframe for Meadow to surrender on the charges, saying flatly:
I am not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction. The two weeks was a tremendous courtesy. At 12:30 pm on Friday I shall file warrants in the system. My team has availability to meet to discuss reasonable consent bonds Wednesday and Thursday.
Fani Willis
Willis signed the note “Yours In Service.” (Meadows subsequently appealed to a federal judge to move the case.)
One reaction to Willis’s reply points out that the DA possibly contradicts herself in labeling Meadows the same as “any other” defendant while also saying she extended him “tremendous courtesy.”
The commenter writes: “Did she give a tremendous courtesy or this is the same as any other criminal defendant? She kinda contradicts herself; wonder if she is less ambitious when prosecuting…”
Another, acknowledging that it would be challenging — if not impossible — to proceed in a such a high profile case without some special consideration, writes: “This is exactly how the justice system is supposed to work. In fact, they already get preferential special treatment compared with most other defendants.”
