Supreme Court Slaps Down Trump Ally’s Desperate Ploy to Evade Justice
Mark Meadows tried to appeal to the Supreme Court over his election interference charges in Georgia, and was swiftly shut down.
Hoping to have his case moved to federal court, Meadows appealed to the Supreme Court, but on Tuesday the court denied his request. A former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, Meadows faces two charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the Peach State.
Meadows’s legal team argued that since he was a “federal officer” at the time, the case should be moved to federal court, where he likely hoped to claim immunity from prosecution. Meadows was rebuffed in the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against the former Trump staffer because he doesn’t work for the federal government anymore. The lower court also ruled that even if he was still a federal officer, “the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties.”
In total, 19 people, including Meadows and Trump, face criminal charges in the effort to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. They have all pleaded not guilty. But Trump’s reelection last week makes any prosecution of him in the next four years unlikely. It’s not yet clear what effect his victory has on his co-defendants.
The Georgia Court of Appeals is expected to hear oral arguments on December 5 on Trump’s appeal to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis thrown off the case, but that may change now that Trump is the president-elect. The Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity affirmed that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted for any crimes, meaning that the Georgia case against Trump will at best be in limbo for several years and at worst disappear altogether.
That will be of little comfort to Meadows and the other defendants in the case, especially since Willis was reelected last week. He and his fellow 2020 election conspirators will be hoping that the Fulton County prosecutor is eventually kicked off the case, or that it gets dismissed altogether.
