Supreme Court rejects former NC congressman Meadows’ appeal of Georgia election case

The US Supreme Court will not take up former North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows’ case against the state of Georgia. Meadows had argued that a prosecution against him on election subversion charges should move from state to federal court.

Lower federal courts had ruled against Meadows, who was charged in connection with his work after the 2020 election as then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.

Supreme Court justices offered no commentary on Tuesday’s decision to reject Meadows’ case. The prosecution will proceed in Georgia courts.

“On August 14, 2023, a Fulton County grand jury returned an indictment alleging that a group of individuals — including Petitioner Mark Meadows, who served under former President Donald Trump as his Chief of Staff — participated in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in then-President Trump’s favor,” lawyers led by Fulton County DA Fani Willis wrote on Oct. 3 . “Petitioner, co-Defendant Trump, and seventeen others were charged with conspiracy to violate Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (‘RICO’). … Petitioner is alleged to have joined the conspiracy and committed overt acts to further it.”

The document cited eight different actions supporting the indictment against Meadows, including meetings, text messages, and phone calls after the 2020 election.

Georgia lawyers highlighted Meadows’ testimony during a hearing in the dispute. “Petitioner repeatedly admitted to engaging in activities on behalf of the Trump Campaign. For example, after first denying he played ‘any role’ in coordinating the creation of slates of fraudulent electors throughout the country, Petitioner admitted on cross-examination that he had directed a campaign official to do precisely that,” according to the court filing. “When asked why he did so, Petitioner responded that if he did not, ‘I knew I would get yelled at.’ Petitioner also failed to outline any coherent limits to his responsibilities or authority, or to identify any basis for his or Trump’s involvement in the states’ administration of elections.”

A federal trial judge “issued an order declining jurisdiction and remanding Petitioner’s criminal prosecution to Fulton County Superior Court, concluding that he had not met his burden of establishing that the actions he ‘took as a participant in the alleged enterprise (the charged conduct) were related to his federal role as White House Chief of Staff,’” Georgia lawyers wrote.

The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, in an opinion authored by Chief Judge William Pryor. “The panel agreed with the district court’s assessment of the evidence, and that the ‘core’ of the charges against Petitioner bore no relation to his federal authority. In its estimation, several of the overt acts were either ‘self-evidently campaign-related’ or had no plausible explanation aside from ‘interference with state election procedures,’” according to Georgia’s court filing.

“The opinion refused to ‘rubber stamp’ Petitioner’s description of his own ‘unfettered discretion’ or to ‘abdicate any analysis of the limits of his authority’ as Petitioner demanded,” Georgia lawyers wrote.

Meadows filed a court document on Oct. 22 criticizing the 11th Circuit’s decision.

“The decision below embraces the concededly novel view that former federal officers are not entitled to a federal forum to litigate their federal immunity defenses,” Meadows’ lawyers wrote. “And it ratchets up the removal standard even for current officers by clinging to a ‘causal-nexus’ test that courts have repeatedly recognized Congress abrogated more than a decade ago.”

“That decision is egregiously and dangerously wrong, and it threatens to usher in a host of politically motivated prosecutions that former and current federal officers will be forced to litigate in what Congress has long recognized may well be ‘hostile state courts,’” Meadows’ court filing added.

Meadows initially sought the Supreme Court’s review in July.

“Georgia has brought a criminal prosecution against a former White House Chief of Staff for actions that he took in the West Wing to assist the President,” according to the initial court filing. “Petitioner Mark Meadows has denied those charges and asserted both federal immunity and the more modest statutory right to have that federal defense adjudicated in federal court.”

“For nearly two centuries, Congress has provided a federal forum for federal officers facing criminal charges brought by state and local officials. Over time, Congress has consistently expanded access to federal forums for federal officers invoking federal defenses. Yet the court below became the first court ‘in the 190-year history of the federal officer removal statute’ to hold that the statute offers no protection to former federal officers facing suit foracts taken while in office,” Meadows’ lawyers wrote last summer.

“Not content with bucking common sense and two centuries of history and precedent, the court then faulted Meadows for failing to satisfy a ‘causal-nexus’ test that Congress abrogated in one of its amendments broadening the scope of federal-officer removal, as multiple circuits have recognized. None of this makes any sense,” the court filing continued.

Meadows represented North Carolina’s 11th District in the US House from 2013 until March 2020. He then went to work as the final White House chief of staff during Trump’s first term in office.