Supreme Court squashes Mark Meadows' push to move Georgia election charges
WASHINGTON – Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has lost his bid to move his Georgia election interference case to federal court, where it might have been easier to avoid prosecution.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a lower court’s rejection of Meadow’s attempt.
Meadows, who was charged with former President Donald Trump and 17 others in what prosecutors say was a sprawling conspiracy to reverse President Joe Biden's 2020 victory in Georgia, argued that the crimes he is accused of committing involved actions that were part of his federal job at the White House.
And the federal courts are the appropriate place to determine how the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity should apply to his case, his lawyers told the justices.
Georgia prosecutors countered that the Supreme Court’s immunity decision was specific to presidents so doesn’t apply to Meadows.
And Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote last year that state courts are capable of evaluating any federal immunity claims.
In September, a federal judge rejected a similar effort by Meadows to move criminal charges against him in Arizona to federal court.
Meadows and a handful of other defendants contend their cases should be heard in federal court because they were federal officials at the time the alleged crimes occurred. Meadows testified last year that his actions scheduling and participating in meetings with Trump were part of his duties as chief of staff.
Federal law allows certain federal officials to move their state cases to federal court – a vestige of the Reconstruction era, when the federal government was concerned about southern state prosecutors and courts harassing federal officials for carrying out their work.
But the appeals court found the statute didn’t apply to former federal officials because charging them criminally wouldn’t affect a federal administration.
“In contrast, a state prosecution of a former officer does not interfere with ongoing federal functions – case-in-point, no one suggests that Georgia’s prosecution of Meadows has hindered the current administration,” Pryor wrote.
He also said Meadows’ official duties as chief of staff “did not extend to an alleged conspiracy to overturn valid election results.”
Meadows' attorney said he's confident Meadows will eventually be exonerated.
"The Supreme Court’s not hearing this case now only means that we will have to continue to assert his rights and his substantive innocence in state courts for the time being," George J. Terwilliger III said in a statement.
Meadows is charged with racketeering and with soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during a call Jan. 2, 2021, when Trump asked him to "find" enough votes to overtake Biden's winning margin.
The indictment describes Meadows attending a White House meeting with Trump and Michigan lawmakers, sending messages to Pennsylvania lawmakers, requesting a memo regarding “disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021,” trying to observe a nonpublic audit of Georgia voting and arranging the Raffensperger call.
Meadows testified at his hearing in U.S. District Court last year that arranging calls and setting up meetings for the president were part of his job. But prosecutors and judges noted Meadows offered no limits to what the job entailed.
The Georgia trial has been on hold as the state Court of Appeals considers whether to remove District Attorney Fani Willis from the case, as Trump and others have requested, because of her romantic relationship with another prosecutor.
The future of the trial became even more uncertain after Trump was elected this month to another term.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court ends Mark Meadows' push to move Georgia election charges