Judges dubious of Mark Meadows’ bid to avoid facing charges in Georgia state court
The former White House chief of staff is charged alongside Donald Trump with a conspiracy to tamper with the 2020 election in Georgia.
A federal appeals court panel took a skeptical stance Friday toward an effort by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to have a federal court take and potentially dismiss the state charges pending against him for allegedly trying to tamper with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
All three members of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel raised sharp questions about Meadows’ argument that his role as Donald Trump’s chief of staff requires federal courts — rather than the courts in Fulton County, Ga. — to oversee the case in which he, Trump and 17 others were charged in an alleged racketeering conspiracy.
During a 50-minute oral argument session in Atlanta, the appeals judges expressed particular skepticism about Meadows’ effort to claim that his work to help Trump secure a second term even after states had certified his defeat — conduct at the heart of the charges against him in Georgia — were part of his official chief-of-staff duties.
“That just cannot be right,” said Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of President Barack Obama. She specifically cited “electioneering on behalf of a specific political candidate” and “an alleged effort to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” as examples of what would fall outside a government official’s duties.
The scope of Meadows’ formal duties is important because, under federal law, U.S. officials have the right to transfer a case from state court into federal court if the case is based on their official acts. That process, known as “removal,” also could result in dismissal of the charges if a federal judge agrees that Meadows’ actions were a legitimate exercise of his official responsibilities.
Judge Nancy Abudu, an appointee of President Joe Biden, noted that a different federal law, known as the Hatch Act, prohibits government officials from engaging in political activity in their official capacity.
In a particularly bad sign for Meadows, the staunchly conservative chief judge of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, William Pryor Jr., signaled he doesn’t believe the removal procedure applies to former officials at all. He said it would have been reasonable for Congress to prefer removal only for current officials because state charges against former officials don’t interfere with “ongoing operations of the federal government.”
“That heightened concern might not exist where you have a former officer,” said Pryor, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “We normally have a presumption that the separate sovereign of a state and its courts are equally faithful to the Constitution of the law and can be trusted.”
Pryor said the charges against Meadows don’t appear to have any bearing on the operation of the Biden administration.
While generally skeptical of Meadows’ reading of the law, all three judges on the panel mused about whether allowing state prosecutions of former federal officials would have a “chilling effect” on current federal officials.
Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger III, who served as deputy attorney general and acting attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, seized on the opening to say he’d have done his federal job differently if he knew he could be prosecuted in state court after leaving office.
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Judges dubious of Mark Meadows’ bid to avoid facing charges in Georgia state court https://t.co/NKZOfeYz9C
— POLITICO (@politico) December 15, 2023
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