Judge orders Mark Meadows to testify in Georgia election probe

A South Carolina judge has a ruling The White House chief of staff mark meadows will testify before a grand jury in a Georgia The case of interference in the 2020 election.

“I’m going to make sure that the witness is material and necessary to the investigation and that the state of Georgia will ensure that it will not cause him an undue hardship,” Judge Edward Miller said Wednesday morning at the end of the hearing.

The case is pending in South Carolina because Meadows now lives there, and Atlanta prosecutors sought an injunction to enforce the subpoena.

Meadows, 63, tried to avoid appearing before a grand jury investigating election meddling by Trump and his allies.

Meadows’ lawyer, James Bannister, said he would appeal the decision.

Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis is leading a grand jury investigation that was sparked by a phone call between former President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told Raffensperger to “find” 11,000 votes to help him defeat President Biden in the Peach State.

The investigation expanded to include a voter fraud story in which Trump allies showed Georgia lawmakers a slide show of alleged voter fraud.

Willis said she hopes to “send a grand jury” before the end of the year.

Atlanta investigators, seeking to testify from Meadows, pointed to his participation in a conversation between Trump and Raffensperger and in a December 2020 White House meeting about election fraud claims that Meadows promoted.

Their documents also mention Meadows’ trip to a Georgia election audit site and emails sent to the Justice Department alleging fraud.

Bannister said Meadows was not a material witness to the conversation between Trump and Raffensperger and cited executive privilege as a reason to quash the subpoena.

Last week, a judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C. would have to sit for questioning in the election investigation before Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas stepped in and temporarily froze the lower court’s ruling. Graham appealed the ruling in August, which also ordered him to testify.

Willis said she wants to question the Republican senator from South Carolina about phone calls he made to Raffensperger in the weeks after the election.

Graham said that as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was interested in cases of possible voter fraud. He denied his guilt.