Mark Meadows asks Supreme Court to transfer Georgia election case to federal court
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is pleading with the Supreme Court to intervene in his Georgia election interference case to shift it into the federal court system.
Meadows, 65, had lost his prior bids to transfer the case, but in a petition to the high court last Friday, he sought to capitalize on its landmark ruling on presidential immunity earlier this month.
“As the Court explained … immunity exists not just to protect current officers from the distractions of litigation, but ‘to protect against the chilling effect [later legal] exposure might have on the carrying out of’ an officer’s duties,” Meadow’s team wrote in its petition.
“It is hard to imagine a case in which the need for a federal forum is more pressing than one that requires resolving novel questions about the duties and powers of one of the most important federal offices in the Nation,” his team added.
Meadows was among the 19 individuals who were charged in the sprawling election racketeering case last year — which includes former President Donald Trump — by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.
Specifically, he is facing two counts for solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer and infringing upon the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. He has pleaded not guilty.
Meadows had long endeavored to bump the case to the federal level, where his team believes they will have more legal tools at its disposal to bat down the case.
But last September, a district judge spurned that request, and in December, a three-judge panel on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
“Meadows cannot have it both ways. He cannot shelter behind his testimony about the breadth of his official responsibilities while disclaiming his admissions that he understood electioneering activity to be out of bounds,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in a scathing opinion.
Pryor stressed that a president’s chief of staff does not have “unfettered authority.”
But Meadows’ team seemed convinced that if it could get the case into the federal court system, then it could succeed on some sort of immunity claim.
In their recent filing to the Supreme Court, Meadows’ lawyers blasted the appeals court ruling as “egregiously wrong” and “exceptionally dangerous.”
“What matters is a federal officer’s status at the time of the conduct at issue, not her status at the time the prosecutor or plaintiff gets around to filing suit,” his team wrote.
The Fulton County case is largely stuck in limbo while the Georgia Court of Appeals weighs an ethics challenge as to whether or not Willis, a Democrat, can remain on the case.
Last month, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee concluded that a subset of pretrial motions in the case can proceed,
However, pretrial deliberations are on pause for some of the bigger names associated with the case who are backing the challenge against Willis, such as Trump and Meadows.
Specifically, the appeals court is weighing a challenge seeking to disqualify Willis due to her “improper” affair with the former top prosecutor in the case, Nathan Wade.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the Supreme Court concluded that a president enjoys absolute immunity for official acts in office and some level of presumptive immunity.
The high court has yet to determine definitively whether or not that immunity extends to Trump’s four-count federal 2020 election subversion case.
President Biden, 81, on Monday unveiled a suite of proposed Supreme Court reforms, including a call for a constitutional amendment to scrap presidential immunity.
