Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows asked a federal court to intervene after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis rejected his request to delay his surrender.
The former top Trump aide, who played a key role in the former president's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, filed an emergency motion to U.S. District Court Judge Steven Jones on Tuesday seeking to have his case moved from state to federal court. Politico reported that Meadows and his legal team purported that the charges brought against him in Willis' indictment are related to his time in a federal role, which should make him "immune" from local prosecution. "Absent this Court's intervention, Mr. Meadows will be denied the protection from arrest that federal law affords former federal officials," Meadows' attorneys wrote to the judge.
Meadows' hasty filing follows Willis' rejection of his request to delay surrender and subsequent arraignment proceedings in Atlanta until Jones makes a ruling following a scheduled August 28 hearing.
"I am not granting any extensions," Willis wrote to Meadows' lawyer on Tuesday morning, reiterating her stringent deadline. "I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction. The two weeks was a tremendous courtesy."
"At 12:30 pm on Friday I shall file warrants in the system," she added. "My team has availability to meet to discuss reasonable consent bonds Wednesday and Thursday."
Mark Meadows asked for more time to surrender in Atlanta.
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 22, 2023
Here is DA Fani Willis responding to the Meadows legal team. pic.twitter.com/EdSS1j4GRM
Meadows is named as one of Trump's 18 co-defendants in the Georgia indictment. His lawyers have argued that, unlike the other alleged co-conspirators, all indicted last week on felony racketeering charges by a grand jury in Atlanta, Meadow is "differently situated" because of his status as a former federal official.
However, some legal experts have argued that this logic is far from a viable justification for Meadows' alleged election crimes. "Unfortunately for Mark Meadows' motion, I haven't been able to find the federal law or constitutional provision that made interfering in a lawful election a part of his job in the White House," jabbed former acting Solicitor General Neal Kaytal on X, formerly Twitter.
Unfortunately for Mark Meadows' motion, I haven't been able to find the federal law or constitutional provision that made interfering in a lawful election a part of his job in the White House.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) August 22, 2023
Despite the fact that Meadows agreed to quietly cooperate with special counsel Jack Smith in his separate investigation-turned-indictment of the ex-president, former Trump administration staffer Alyssa Farrah Griffin noted that the Georgia indictment has ostensibly foiled Meadows' "delicate dance" with federal prosecutors.
"Meadows, from what I understand, is basically — which is classic to anyone who knows him — playing all sides of things, trying to leave Trumpworld, going as far as he can cooperating unofficially with DOJ. I say that to mean he's responded to a subpoena. He's very clearly at least claiming he's not flipped there," she told CNN.
However, she continued, "Fulton County was always this X-factor because Fani Willis didn't give him kind of an angle where he could basically quietly cooperate. So I'm not sure how this is going to work out."
"I would also just note ... there's a specific line in the Georgia indictment where it talks about Meadows actually offering money to speed up a recount," Griffin added. "That was going to come from the Trump campaign. I don't know how you could possibly legally say that he was doing that in his official White House Chief of Staff duty. That's very much an election and political effort underway."
