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Donald Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in his election interference case in Georgia, where he is criminally charged for his alleged attempts to reverse Trump’s election loss in the state in 2020.
Meadows — who was charged alongside Trump and more than a dozen other allies for an alleged plot to pressure state officials and election workers — is now invoking the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on presidential “immunity” to bail him out of charges for what he said were his official duties as Trump’s top White House aide.
Meadows, who has pleaded not guilty, had tried to move his state criminal case into federal court, arguing the actions at the center of the charges were under his official capacity as Trump’s most senior White House aide.
But a federal district court and appeals court judges rejected his argument, kicking off his appeal to the nation’s highest court.
“Just as immunity protection for former officers is critical to ensuring that current and future officers are not deterred from enthusiastic service, so too is the promise of a federal forum in which to litigate that defense,” his attorneys wrote in a petition dated on July 26.
“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,” they argued.
His attorneys said the appeals court ruling was “egregiously wrong” — pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision presidential “immunity” to make the case that “federal immunity fully protects former officers, often requires difficult and fact-intensive judgment calls at the margins, and provides not just a substantive immunity but a use immunity that protects against the use of official acts to try to hold a current or former federal officer liable for unofficial acts.”
“All of those sensitive disputes plainly belong in federal court,” they wrote.
Meadows and his co-defendants are charged under Georgia’s sweeping racketeering statute. He is also charged with criminal solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
The Georgia case is effectively on hold after Trump and his co-defendants appealed a decision that kept Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on the prosecution team after she had a relationship with a special prosecutor.
That appeal won’t be heard until December, and the “immunity” decision in Trump’s federal election interference case has thrown a wrench the proceedings — likely derailing any chances that the former president will face a trial in Georgia for his efforts to reverse his election loss before voters cast their ballots in November.
Meadows also faces nine similar criminal charges in Arizona, where he was indicted along with Rudy Giuliani and more than a dozen other Republican officials for another alleged election interference scheme. He has also pleaded not guilty.
