Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been subpoenaed to testify at a Monday hearing examining former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ efforts to move the Fulton County prosecution against him to federal court, according to court filings.
The subpoena was served to Raffensperger by the Fulton County district attorney’s office.
The subpoena is one of multiple indications that Fulton County prosecutors plan to make former President Donald Trump’s January 2021 call with the election official a focus of a Monday court hearing on efforts to get the Fulton County district attorney’s charges against thrown out.
Meadows was on the call — in which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” the votes that would reverse his electoral loss in the state – and now faces charges in the Georgia election subversion case, in part, because of his participation in it.
The hearing relates to Meadows’ bid to move the case to federal court.
A spokesperson for Raffensperger’s office declined to comment on the subpoena.
Earlier this week, District Attorney Fani Willis’ office subpoenaed two other individuals, both lawyers who have been tied to Trump’s election subversion efforts, who were on the call.
She also has subpoenaed Frances Watson, who was then the chief investigator at the Georgia secretary of state’s office and who was told by Trump in a separate post-election phone call that she would be “praised” if she reversed the 2020 results.
Monday’s hearing, at Atlanta’s federal court, is before US District Judge Steve Jones. The judge is examining the request by Meadows that the Fulton County prosecution moved to federal court.
Meadows argued that the federal court should dismiss the charges against him because the indictment targeted conduct he was engaged in as an agent of the federal government.
Willis pushed against that claim in a court filing Wednesday, saying the Raffensperger call, along with other episodes involving Meadows in the charging documents, were examples of political activity that fell outside his government duties as a White House official.
The dispute is also a preview of how Willis’ office might respond if Trump launches a similar maneuver to push the case to federal court, as the former president is expected to do.
“The audio of the phone call to Secretary Raffensperger alone demonstrates that the defendant shared a ‘personal interest’ with Mr. Trump in seeing the Trump campaign achieve its goal of reversing Trump’s electoral loss in Georgia; it also demonstrates the defendant’s actual criminal intent in participating in the solicitation of the violation of the Secretary’s oath of office by ‘finding votes’ or otherwise changing the outcome of the election,” Willis said in the Wednesday filing in the Meadows matter.
