Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, one of the few Republicans to stand firm against Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, was subpoenaed Thursday to testify in a hearing for one of Trump’s co-conspirators indicted in the Peach State.
Mark Meadows served as White House chief of staff at the end of Trump’s presidency. He was charged alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants with felony racketeering for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Meadows has requested to move his case to federal court, arguing that his job as a federal employee makes him immune to state charges. A district court judge will hear Meadows’s request on Monday.
The prosecuting attorney, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, issued a subpoena Thursday for Raffensperger to testify at the hearing. She also subpoenaed Frances Watson, the chief investigator into whether Georgia’s election results were fraudulent. They were not.
Potential testimony from Raffensperger and Watson does not bode well for Meadows. Meadows organized and participated in the now-infamous phone call, during which Trump begged Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes—the exact amount needed to flip the state’s election results to Trump.
But Raffensperger refused to cave then, and he has since resolutely maintained that his state’s election results are legitimate. “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law,” he said after Willis issued the indictment. “You either have it, or you don’t.”
Meadows also traveled to Georgia in December 2020 and tried to watch ballots being audited for potential fraud. Watson was one of multiple people to whom Meadows spoke and who stopped him from entering the place where the audit was being carried out.
The indictment says that Meadows arranged a call between Trump and Watson, during which Trump insisted he had won the election and told Watson, “When the right answer comes out you’ll be praised.” The document also alleges that Meadows texted Watson asking her if it was possible to “speed up” the audit so that it would be completed before Congress certified the election results.