Mark Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff for the Trump administration, argued in a Monday legal filing that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “committed errors” that raise “serious constitutional concerns” in her “unnecessarily complicated” attempts to prevent his case from being removed to a federal court.
Meadows (pictured above) has repeatedly asserted the case brought against him by Fulton County should be tried in a federal court, citing his position as a government employee who answered directly to former President Donald Trump when his alleged offenses were committed. U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones denied various attempts from Meadows to remove the case, but late last week, the 11th Circuit announced it would hear his appeal and grant it expedited status.
In the new filing, Meadows’ attorneys write that Willis “unnecessarily complicated a straightforward federal officer removal case, and in the process, committed errors that raise serious constitutional concerns” and add that she failed to acknowledge Meadows was “a uniquely prominent federal officer” who is being prosecuted “based on actions taken in the White House while discharging his official duties,” as ordered by the former president.
“This is not a case where the Chief of Staff went down to Georgia in his private capacity and got in some kerfuffle,” the lawyers argued, “it is a criminal prosecution of the Chief of Staff based on actions taken in the White House while discharging his official duties.”
Meadows’ team alleges Willis and her office falsely claimed the federal government has no role in state administration of federal elections, the White House has “no interest in federal election law,” and that “the Hatch Act cabins the scope of a Chief of Staff’s authority to arrange and staff meetings for the president about ‘politics,'” while also ignoring precedent from related cases to instead craft her own justification for keeping Meadows’ case in Fulton County.
Attorneys said that Fulton County’s false assertions “are completely wrong” and “their very presence” suggests the case against Meadows “is the kind of case Congress made removable to federal court.”
The filing also included quotes from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that seem to contradict Willis’s claims, including Raffensperger purportedly acknowledging Meadows “was acting on behalf of the President” and acknowledging the federal government plays a role in state administration of elections that is “spelled out in… federal law.”
Should the appeals court accept Meadows’ request to remove his case from Fulton County, he would be the third defendant to be separated from Willis’s original August indictment against Trump and 18 individuals who aided his efforts to contest the 2020 election. Attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro had their cases severed from the greater indictment last week.
Another defendant, former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, is likewise asking to have the case against him removed from Fulton County.
Mirroring Meadows’ path through the courts, Clark’s attorneys appeared in U.S. District Court to make their case before Jones this week. Unlike Meadows, however, Clark did not appear in court himself. Jones is reportedly skeptical of Clark’s claims, suggesting a denial and appeal to the 11th Circuit may be forthcoming for the former Justice Department official.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Georgia Star News and a reporter for the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mark Meadows” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
