Appeals court rejects Meadows bid to move Georgia election case to federal court

An appeals court panel denied former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s bid to move his Georgia 2020 election racketeering criminal charges to federal court on Monday, rejecting a strategy that could’ve led to the charges being tossed and provided him with other advantages.

In a swift ruling issued just three days after oral arguments, the three-judge panel ruled that former federal officials — as opposed to current ones — are ineligible to move their charges.

Meadows had hoped to move courts to assert immunity from the indictment, a tactic that could’ve imperiled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) prosecution of other co-defendants, too, including former President Trump.  

Willis charged Trump, Meadows and more than a dozen others over accusations they unlawfully attempted to overturn President Biden’s victory in Georgia. It is one of four indictments Trump faces.

Arguing he was acting in his capacity as chief of staff, Meadows contended that federal law enabled him to move his case out of state court.

But even if the law governing such transfers, a process known as removal, did extend to former officials, Meadows cannot leverage the statute because he did not establish he was acting in his official role, the judges ruled.

By finding that former federal officials are ineligible to move courts, Monday’s ruling also is likely to doom similar efforts being mounted by four other co-defendants in Trump’s case: the three so-called “fake electors” charged and Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. Their attempts are moving on a slower timetable.

Although all three judges agreed, the two Democratic appointees on the panel wrote a separate opinion urging Congress to amend the removal statute so it applies to former officials.

Judge Robin Rosenbaum, joined by Judge Nancy Abudu, warned of a hypothetical in which more than a dozen states could try to prosecute top administration officials over policy disagreements. The officials would have no guarantee that a federal court would hear their defenses after leaving office, Rosenbaum noted.

“This nightmare scenario keeps me up at night,” she wrote.

“In my view, not extending the federal-officer removal statute to former officers for prosecutions based on the official actions during the tenure is bad policy, and it represents a potential threat to our republic’s stability,” she continued. “Of course, my role as a judge does not allow me to rewrite laws to fit my view of what’s wise. Rather, I must faithfully interpret the laws as they are written. So today I join the Majority Opinion because it does that.”

Beyond closing a pathway to assert immunity and other federal defenses, the panel’s decision rejects a move that would have broadened the jury pool to less-heavily Democratic areas of Georgia and have Meadows’s case overseen by a federal judge. 

By moving ahead in state court, the trial also is expected to be televised. 

Meadows could, however, appeal to the Supreme Court or the full bench of 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges.

The Hill has reached out to Meadows’s attorney and Willis’s office for comment.

The 11th Circuit panel’s decision also affirmed a federal judge’s ruling that Meadows couldn’t move his charges, anyways, because the allegations were outside his official capacity as Trump’s chief of staff.

“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 William Pryor, a President George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the court.

Meadows had argued that he had wide, often undefined authority as chief of staff to assist the president with whatever was needed.

Prosecutors charged Meadows with allegedly entering a months-long criminal conspiracy with Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s election results.

Meadows also faces a second charge of soliciting a public officer to violate their oath over Meadows’s participation in an infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), in which Trump asked the state official to “find” additional votes for him. Meadows pleaded not guilty.

But the court ruled that it can’t “rubber stamp” Meadows’s position that he has “unfettered authority.”

“Meadows cannot have it both ways,” Pryor wrote.

“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. That he repeatedly denied having any role in, or speaking on behalf of, the Trump campaign, reflects his recognition that such activities were forbidden to him as chief of staff.”

This story was updated at 5:06 p.m.