Lawyers for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and transfer the Georgia election fraud case to federal court, pointing to a recent Supreme Court decision that gave former President Trump some immunity in a federal election interference case.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Meadows’ lawyers said the Georgia lawsuit “frames the case as one about ‘federal interference with state power,'” arguing that a federal court is needed to hear questions about Meadows’ actions while he was Trump’s chief of staff.
“It is difficult to imagine a case in which the need for federal courts is more pressing than one that requires the resolution of new questions about the mission and authority of one of the nation’s most important federal agencies,” the lawyers wrote in the petition, which was filed with The Hill newspaper.
The petition is Meadows’ latest attempt to move his case to federal court and comes months after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied his request in December, ruling that former federal employees, unlike current federal employees, do not have standing to have their cases moved. Even if the law applies to former federal employees, the panel said Meadows cannot take advantage of it because he has not shown he was acting in official capacity.
The appeals court then decided not to hear arguments in February of last year.
The former chief of staff claims he was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff at the time the alleged conduct took place and hopes the court motion will allow him to claim immunity from the indictment, which alleges that Meadows, Trump and more than a dozen others tried to illegally overturn President Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Meadows and four of Trump’s other co-defendants are also pursuing similar lawsuits, but the process has been delayed and has not yet reached the Supreme Court.
The Georgia case is effectively at a standstill as a state appeals court is scheduled to hear in December a case challenging Trump’s attempt to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her position after she sued the former president.
Zach Schoenfeld contributed reporting.
