Mark Meadows, a co-defendant in the case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia, is asking a judge to move his case to federal court “promptly” before Friday afternoon, the deadline for his surrender at Fulton County Jail.
Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, said through his counsel in an emergency motion filed Tuesday that the decision process of whether to remove his case from state to federal court would be “frustrated” if the judge allowed for his arrest.
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“Absent this Court’s intervention, Mr. Meadows will be denied the protection from arrest that federal law affords former federal officials, and this Court’s prompt but orderly consideration of removal will be frustrated,” Meadows’s attorney wrote.
Meadows, who is facing two felony charges related to his alleged illegal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, first filed a removal request last week, and the judge responded by setting a hearing on the matter for Aug. 28.
In Tuesday’s court filing, Meadows shared emails between his attorney John Moran and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the lead prosecutor in the case, and contended that they showed he had made reasonable efforts to confer with Willis and had been met with an unjust response.
In one email, Moran requested from Willis a “modest extension” of one business day to allot time for Meadows’s hearing regarding removing his case from state to federal court. Moran also offered to discuss terms of Meadows’s voluntary surrender at the jail, such as a bond amount, should it still be appropriate for Meadows to surrender following the hearing.
Willis rejected the request, responding, “Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction.”
Willis said she had already granted a “tremendous courtesy” of two weeks for Meadows and 18 other co-defendants in the case to turn themselves in and warned she would be issuing arrest warrants at 12:30 p.m. on Friday for anyone who had not voluntarily done so by then.
Moran countered that Meadows was, in fact, different than other co-defendants because he is a “former federal official charged with state-law crimes for conduct that occurred while he was serving as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ordered Willis to respond to Meadows’s motion for emergency relief by Wednesday afternoon.
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Willis, in the meantime, subpoenaed attorneys Kurt Hilbert and Alex Kaufman to appear as witnesses at Meadows’s hearing on federal removal. Kaufman had been listening in on the infamous phone call between Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, during which Trump urged the secretary to find more votes.
Regardless of whether Meadows is still forced to surrender in Fulton County by Friday, his removal hearing is set to take place Monday morning at a federal courthouse in Atlanta. A notice filed Tuesday indicated that, unlike in state courtrooms, no cellphones or cameras would be permitted in the federal courtroom.
