Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the Georgia election racketeering case and move it to federal court, pointing to the high court’s recent ruling granting former President Trump some immunity in his federal election subversion case.
In a petition to the Supreme Court, Meadows’s lawyers said the Georgia case has “framed the case as about ‘federal meddling in matters of state authority,'” and argued a federal forum is needed to address questions over Meadows’s actions while serving as Trump’s chief of staff.
“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,” the attorneys wrote in the petition, shared with The Hill.
The petition is Meadows’s latest attempt to move the case to federal court and comes months after a three-judge panel 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request last December, ruling former federal officials — as opposed to current ones — are ineligible to move their charges. Even if the law did apply to former federal officials, the panel said Meadows could not leverage the statute because he didn’t establish he was acting in his official role.
The full appeals court later decided against hearing arguments last February.
The former chief of staff has argued he was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff when the alleged actions took place and has hoped moving courts will help him assert immunity from the indictment, which accuses Meadows, Trump and more than a dozen others of unlawfully attempting to overturn President Biden’s victory in Georgia.
In addition to Meadows, four of Trump’s other co-defendants have mounted similar efforts to move their charges, but those are proceeding on a slower time table and have not yet reached the Supreme Court.
The Georgia case is virtually halted as a state appeals court prepares to hear arguments in December over Trump’s efforts to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the case against the former president.
Zach Schonfeld contributed reporting.