Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is trying once again to move the Fulton County election interference case against him to federal court, this time asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
The onetime Republican congressman, who was then-President Donald Trump’s top aide in the final months of his administration, is banking that a federal court will be more favorable to his argument that he has federal immunity from prosecution.
In a 47-page petition, Meadows said all the criminal conduct he was accused of in Georgia involves actions he took in conjunction with Trump’s role as president. Because of that, he has the right under a nearly 200-year-old statute to have his defense heard in federal rather than state court, his attorneys argued. Two lower federal courts have rejected his argument.
“A White House chief of staff facing criminal charges based on actions relating to his work for the president of the United States should not be a close call — especially now that this court has recognized that federal immunity impacts what evidence can be considered, not just what conduct can form the basis for liability,” Meadows’ legal team stated in the petition, which was first reported by CNN.
The move comes seven months after a three-judge panel on the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals swiftly rejected Meadows’ request. Days after holding oral arguments, the judges released a unanimous ruling concluding that “the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties” and thus the case should stay in Fulton Superior Court.
“Simply put, whatever the precise contours of Meadows’s official authority, that authority did not extend to an alleged conspiracy to overturn valid election results,” Chief Judge Bill Pryor, known for his conservative credentials, wrote in opinion, in which he was joined by two colleagues who were appointed by Democratic presidents. They upheld a decision from U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones.
Meadows’ team of attorneys, led by George Terwilliger and Paul Clement, told the Supreme Court that the 11th Circuit’s decision was “not just wrong, but dangerously so.”
“Any test that relegates to state court sensitive questions about whether and to what extent the chief of staff’s activities in service of the president can form the basis of a criminal prosecution has gone seriously awry,” they wrote.
Meadows was indicted in Fulton last summer on racketeering charges alongside Trump, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and 16 others. He was charged with the additional felony of soliciting Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during the infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Trump.
The latter charge was among the six that were dropped by Judge Scott McAfee for lacking sufficient detail. Prosecutors have appealed that ruling and are hoping to have the charges reinstated.
Among Meadows’ so-called overt acts that contributed to the RICO charge are his December 2020 visit to Cobb County when a signature verification audit was being conducted; his texting a Secretary of State official about a Fulton County audit that Trump desired; his arranging a December 2020 phone call from Trump to Secretary of State investigator Frances Watson; and him coordinating the phone call between Trump and Raffensperger.
The appeal was widely expected, especially after Meadows hired Clement, a U.S. solicitor general during the second Bush administration who is known as a Supreme Court specialist.
Meadows has fiercely fought Fulton County DA Fani Willis throughout the course of her investigation into the 2020 election. He pressed back against a summons to testify before the special grand jury that aided her probe and only testified after he was told he must show by the Supreme Court in South Carolina, where he lived at the time.
The Republican and his team are hoping that the high court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, which granted presidents broad protection from prosecution for their official acts, will help his case before the justices.
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