A federal appeals court on Monday rejected former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s request to transfer his 2020 election interference case in Georgia to federal court, ruling he was not entitled to the privilege because he was not currently a federal official.
The court also ruled that Meadows would not have qualified for such a transfer because the conduct he was charged with did not relate to his official duties as Trump’s final chief of staff, instead counting as campaign activities.
The latest legal defeat could mark the end of the road for Meadows to have his case transferred from Fulton county superior court to federal district court in Atlanta, unless he appeals to the US supreme court and it agrees to hear the case.
Meadows was charged in August with violating the state racketeering statute alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.
The indictment also included a charge against Meadows for his role in setting up Trump’s infamous recorded phone call on 2 January 2021 asking the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the battleground state.
Meadows filed to transfer his case to federal court – a move that would allow him to seek dismissal of the charges on federal immunity grounds – but had the motion rejected by the US district judge Steve Jones. Meadows then appealed to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.
The issue for Meadows has long been whether his involvement in the call or his involvement in the so-called fake electors scheme were within the scope of his official duties as a White House chief of staff, as he argued, or whether he was engaged in campaign activity, as prosecutors have argued.
In a detailed 47-page opinion issued just days after the eleventh circuit held oral arguments in the case, last Friday, the chief judge, William Pryor, affirmed the lower court judgement that Meadows had not satisfied the requirements to have his case transferred out of state court, known as federal-officer removal.
“Federal-officer removal under section 1442(a)(1) does not apply to former federal officers, and even if it did, the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties,” Pryor wrote.
The ruling was largely expected after Meadows faced a three-judge appeals panel last Friday consisting of Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees, respectively – that appeared hostile to his claims that any actions he undertook as chief of staff were official duties.
“That just cannot be right,” Rosenbaum said at the hearing, suggesting “electioneering on behalf of a specific political candidate” or becoming involved in “an alleged effort to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” might be examples of actions not covered by a federal official’s job.
The opinion took issue with an expansive interpretation advanced by Meadows that he was eligible to transfer his case if even one of the alleged felony counts in the Rico case related to his official duties.
“A criminal conspirator is not defined by any single actus reus in furtherance, but by his agreement to join the conspiracy,” Pryor wrote. “Indeed, the state need not prove that Meadows committed any of the overt acts, or that he engaged in any overt act at all so long as one of his co-conspirators did.”
