A federal appeals court on Monday rejected former Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows’s bid to have his criminal case prosecuted in federal court.
Former President Donald Trump, Meadows, and 17 others were charged in August after a grand jury handed up a sweeping racketeering indictment to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, alleging they ran a criminal enterprise seeking to undo his 2020 election defeat. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected Meadows’s request just days after hearing oral arguments on Friday.
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“At bottom, whatever the chief of staff’s role with respect to state election administration, that role does not include altering valid election results in favor of a particular candidate,” Judge William Pryor Jr., an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote in the opinion.
Pryor’s majority opinion was joined by Circuit Judges Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Nancy Abudu, an appointee of President Joe Biden.
Meadows sought to move his case to federal court by arguing that the crimes he was accused of committing occurred while he was conducting official duties in his role as chief of staff. He appealed to the 11th Circuit after U.S. District Judge Steve Jones wasn’t compelled by Meadows’s testimony that his interceding in the Georgia election was a duty under his federal office.
The panel’s majority contended there was no “causal connection” between Meadows’s “official authority” and his alleged participation in the election subversion conspiracy.
Moving the case to federal court was seen by legal experts as a way for Meadows to have his charges dismissed by invoking federal immunity extended to certain people who are charged or sued for conduct related to their government roles. It also may have landed him a jury pool pulled from a broader area than the overwhelmingly Democratic Fulton County.
Meadows can still appeal this decision to the Supreme Court or ask the full 11th Circuit to hear the case.
For the conduct in which Willis accuses Meadows of engaging, the judges added he had “no official authority to operate on behalf of the Trump campaign.”
“Meadows also cannot point to any authority for influencing state officials with allegations of election fraud,” the judges said in their opinion. “Nor did Meadows’s official duties include interference with state election procedures.”
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Trump is among the 19 initial co-defendants indicted in the case Willis brought against them in August. Four defendants, including lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis and local bail bondsman Scott Hall, have pleaded guilty as part of deals made with prosecutors.
Willis has requested that a trial begin for the remaining defendants on Aug. 5, three months before the election, as Trump seeks the chance to take on Biden next November.
