Former Trump administration White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made a new filing with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday evening, requesting an en banc hearing for his appeal of a lower court’s decision denying his request to have the election case against him in Fulton County, Georgia removed to a federal court. Meadows also retained new legal counsel for his attempt to have the entire circuit court hear his appeal.
Following the decision by a panel of judges on the 11th Circuit to deny Meadows’ appeal in December, his attorneys argued in the new filing that its ruling fails to conform with Supreme Court precedent and “consideration by the full court is necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of decisions in this court.”
Meadows’ attorneys argued, “The panel’s decision is profoundly wrong – it defies text, precedent, and common sense – and profoundly consequential.”
The filing highlights three purported errors by the 11th Circuit panel. Meadows’ attorneys said the panel neglected to acknowledge the “low bar” for the removal of a federal official, failed to follow its legal requirement to consider the facts of the case from Meadows’ perspective, and chose against following “black-letter law” by instead “making a judgement about what it perceived to be the ‘heart of the indictment.'”
“This compendium of errors was necessary to defeat removal in what should have been the most obvious case imaginable for federal-officer removal,” the lawyers said. “While courts struggle with whether tobacco companies and health insurers can remove, a White House Chief of Staff facing a local prosecutor’s indictment based on actions taken in the West Wing should not be a close call.”
They noted, “No Chief of Staff has ever had to defend his West Wing actions in State Court,” and warned that “if the panel decision stands, and Meadows becomes the first, he will not be the last.”
Meadows revealed through the filing his retention of Paul Clement, who was U.S. solicitor general and an acting attorney general for former President George W. Bush. More recently, Clement successfully won a National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuit in New York that struck down a state gun law that heavily restricted when a concealed handgun license would be issued.
Erin Murphy was also part of that NRA lawsuit and was also reportedly retained by Meadows. The former White House official kept his existing defense attorneys.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) indicted Meadows as part of her racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and those who helped him contest the 2020 election results in Georgia. Willis accused Meadows of urging Georgia elected officials to “violate their oaths of office by unlawfully changing the outcome of the election” in Trump’s favor to prevent the former president from “yelling” at him. Meadows pleaded not guilty.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and 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.
