Supreme Court rejects Mark Meadows effort to move Georgia Jan. 6 case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff to transfer to federal court the Georgia election interference case against him.

Mark Meadows had asked the justices to overturn a lower-court ruling rejecting his claims that the case should be moved out of state court because his alleged conduct was tied to his official federal duties during the first Trump presidential term.

There were no noted dissents from the justices’ order Monday.

Meadows was indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, last year along with Trump and 17 others on charges that they illegally conspired to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state. Meadows, who has pleaded not guilty, had sought to move his case to federal court, claiming protections under a U.S. statute that allows federal officials to move legal cases against them from state to federal court when the charges are tied to official duties.

In December, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit turned away Meadows’s arguments, writing that the federal removal statute “does not apply to former federal officers, and even if it did, the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’s official duties.”

That opinion was written by Chief Judge William Pryor.

Trump’s reelection as president almost certainly means his state trial in Georgia will not go forward, at least while he is in the White House. But his remaining co-defendants - a few have already pleaded guilty to some charges - could face trial after some pending appeals.

In response to the Supreme Court’s order Tuesday, Meadows’s lawyer echoed Trump’s claims that the state prosecution was politically motivated and said his client would eventually be exonerated.

Allowing the 11th Circuit ruling to stand “puts all former federal officers, including those soon leaving office, at risk of being left to the wiles of every politically hostile district attorney or state AG in the country without what for 200 years has been access to a federal court for a fair hearing,” lawyer George J. Terwilliger III said in a statement.