Who is Steve Jones, the judge deciding whether to move Fulton County defendants' cases to federal court?
Federal Judge Steve Jones of the Northern District of Georgia is slated to hear requests from the Fulton County defendants who are seeking to move their cases to federal court.
Jones was appointed by former President Obama and was confirmed by the Senate in 2011 in a 90-0 vote. Before serving in federal court, Jones had served as a judge of the 10th Superior Court District of Georgia since 1995.
Jones was born and raised in Athens, Ga., and attended the University of Georgia for both his undergraduate and law degree, which he received in 1987.
Jones will hear from at least five defendants seeking to move their cases, who are among 19 individuals charged with attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia: Mark Meadows, former President Trump’s White House chief of staff; Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official; David Shafer, a fake elector and former Georgia Republican Party chairman; Shawn Still, now a sitting state senator; and Cathy Latham, the then-chairwoman of the Coffee County, Ga., Republican Party.
The judge has already weighed in on the Georgia election case by denying requests from Meadows and Clark to block their arrest in Fulton County last week. The co-defendants had argued that their arrest and state proceedings should be halted as they attempt to move their cases to federal court.
“As Meadows’s arguments and cases cited to the contrary are not persuasive, the Court denies Meadows’s request for the Court to decide its jurisdiction over his criminal case before holding an evidentiary hearing,” Jones ruled in Meadows’s case.
Meadows’s hearing on whether his case will be moved to federal court began Monday morning.
Jones has also made other significant rulings in the state. Just last month, he refused to dismiss lawsuits alleging that Georgia’s congressional and legislative districts illegally discriminate against Black voters, saying that he must hear the facts in a full trial.
He also ruled in 2020 that a six-week abortion ban in the state was unconstitutional, saying that a woman has a “constitutional liberty” to have “some freedom to terminate her pregnancy.”
The Associated Press contributed.