The Supreme Court dealt a major legal blow to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Tuesday, refusing to move the Georgia election interference charges against him to federal court.
The Supreme Court dealt a major legal blow to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Tuesday, refusing to move the Georgia election interference charges against him from state to federal court.
The court’s action came in a routine one-sentence order, with no noted dissents.
Meadows is one of 18 people indicted in state court on charges of illegally conspiring to keep then-President Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. Trump was indicted on similar state charges, but the Supreme Court earlier this year granted him broad immunity from prosecution for his official acts, and presumptively immune beyond that. Meadows sought to leverage that decision to apply to him, contending that the charges against him should at least be moved from state to federal court because he was a federal officer at the time the alleged conspiracy took place.
But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, ruled that Meadows is no longer a federal official, and that even if he were, his actions were «not related to his official duties.» Among other things, Meadows was on the 2020 phone call with Trump when the then-president unsuccessfully sought to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to flip the state vote.
