The Supreme Court has declined to hear Mark Meadows’ appeal in Georgia’s state election interference case. Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff wanted to take his charges to federal court in a case in which Trump was also charged.
The refusal joined the Supreme Court’s list of routine orders published on Tuesday morning, which consisted mainly of appeals such as Meadows’, which the justices refused to hear. As is typical of such denials, the court did not issue an opinion explaining why it chose not to hear the case.
It is the court’s latest action in a Trump-related criminal case, following last term’s decision granting Trump broad immunity in the federal election interference case. With both of the president-elect’s federal criminal cases effectively set to disappear when he returns to the White House, the Georgia case will be the only one in which he has not been tried, and he will not be tried until after he is tried. leave office. (Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money case was tentatively scheduled for November 26, but that could also be postponed ahead of his return to the White House.)
Even if Meadows had won his removal to federal court, his prosecution would not have turned into a federal case for which Trump could be dismissed or pardoned. Then what was he after?
In Meadows’ petition to the judges, his lawyers cited Trump’s immunity rule. They wrote that that decision “makes clear that federal immunity fully protects former officers, often requires difficult and fact-intensive judgment, and provides not only a substantive immunity but also a usage immunity that protects against the use of official actions to adjudicate a hold current or former federal officials liable for onofficial acts. All of these sensitive disputes clearly belong in federal court.”
In her brief Supreme Court review, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wrote that Meadows had placed “excessive reliance” on Trump’s immunity case. She noted that Trump’s case concerned immunity, while Meadows’ appeal concerned the removal issue. Willis further wrote that Trump’s immunity case only applied to former presidents, adding that the case did not attempt to create broader “executive branch immunity” or otherwise apply to officials like the petitioner [Meadows]whose role is not prescribed by the Constitution or even mentioned in it.”
Meadows petitioned the judges after his claim was dismissed in the lower federal courts, most recently by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal dismissal was written by the circuit’s chief judge, William Pryor, an appointee of the Republican Party who has long been respected in conservative circles. Pryor wrote that former officials like Meadows cannot move their state cases to federal court.
Notably, he was joined in his opinion by two Democratic appointees, who legally agreed with the outcome but lamented the “nightmare scenario” that the removal would not be extended to former officers. In a unanimous opinion, they argued that “failing to extend the statute for the removal of federal officers to include former officers for prosecution based on their official actions while in office is bad policy, and poses a potential threat to the stability of our republic .”
The expungement issue — which other Georgia defendants have also pushed for — isn’t the only factor complicating the racketeering case, in which Meadows has pleaded not guilty. The 2020 election-related prosecution has been stayed as an unrelated preliminary investigation is pending in state court, where defendants are seeking to disqualify Willis and her office from hearing the case. If that effort is successful, it’s an open question when or even if another office or prosecutor will take over.
In rejecting Meadows’ appeal, the justices removed one potential complication from the case, but its overall fate remains uncertain.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
