Judges press lawyer for Meadows on bid to move Georgia case to federal court

ATLANTA — A lawyer for Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff under former President Donald Trump, faced tough questions from a panel of judges Friday as Meadows renewed his bid to move a Georgia election interference case from state court to federal court.

The panel of three appeals court judges heard brief oral arguments from a Georgia prosecutor and a lawyer for Meadows over the jurisdiction of the case, in which Meadows is accused of working with a group of people to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.

The judges asked sharp questions of both sides but seemed particularly skeptical of the arguments advanced by Meadows, who claims that the allegations against him concern actions he took as a federal officer and thus should be dealt with in federal court.

Moving the case to federal court would give Meadows advantages, including a jury pool drawn from a wider geographic area with moderately more support for Trump. But in September, a federal judge sided with the prosecutors, writing that Meadows’ conduct, as outlined in the indictment, was “not related to his role as White House chief of staff or his executive branch authority.”

Meadows appealed that decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the three-judge panel — consisting of two Democrat-appointed judges and one Republican-appointed judge — peppered lawyers with questions Friday in an ornate courtroom in downtown Atlanta.

In her questioning of Meadows’ lawyer, Judge Nancy Abudu, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said that Meadows’ own testimony, in August, had seemed to broadly define what actions were part of his official duties as chief of staff.

“The testimony that was provided essentially didn’t provide any outer limits to what his duties were,” Abudu said. “So it’s almost as if he could do anything, in that capacity, as long as he could say it was on behalf of the president.”

But Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger, countered that Meadows did not need to establish those limits, but rather only had to “establish a nexus” to the duties of his federal job. Terwilliger’s argument focused on the idea that keeping the case in state court would be inappropriate because it would require a state judge to decide important matters relating to federal law, such as what the role of White House chief of staff entails.

“That makes no sense,” Terwilliger said. “Those are federal questions that need to be resolved in federal court.”

In addition to Abudu, the panel included Chief Circuit Judge William Pryor, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of President Barack Obama. The case concerns the concept of “removal,” which means essentially transferring a case from state to federal court; if the case was removed, Meadows would continue to face the same charges.

The case against Meadows stems from a lengthy investigation by Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, that led to her charging 19 people — including Trump — with racketeering and other charges related to their attempts to keep Trump in power. Four of those defendants have reached plea agreements with Willis’ office, and another four besides Meadows are seeking to have their cases moved to federal courts, including Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking Justice Department official. Meadows, Trump and Clark have pleaded not guilty.

To move his case to federal court, Meadows’ lawyers must show that his actions — as alleged in the indictment — were within the scope of his job duties as chief of staff and that Meadows still counts as a federal officer, even though he no longer holds that position.

Lawyers with Willis’ office have argued that Meadows was taking political actions in service of Trump’s reelection campaign rather than operating in his role as chief of staff. Donald Wakeford, a top prosecutor in Willis’ office, also argued Friday that Meadows no longer has the ability to move his case to federal court because he is no longer a federal officer.

The judges posed several hypotheticals to Wakeford about whether that interpretation might allow states to charge unpopular federal officials shortly after they left office. Wakeford argued that regardless of such concerns, the relevant federal law does not indicate that former federal officials can move their cases out of state court.

Among the criminal acts alleged in the indictment of Meadows is a phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which Trump said he wanted to “find” nearly 12,000 more Trump votes, enough to reverse his defeat. Meadows testified in August that Trump had directed him to set up that phone call.

In December 2020, Meadows also made a surprise visit to Cobb County, Georgia, accompanied by Secret Service agents, intending to view an audit that was in progress there. Local officials declined to let him do so because it was not open to the public.

No matter what the appeals court decides, lawyers for either side could ask the Supreme Court to take up the case, potentially enmeshing the nation’s top court in a contentious political case during an election year.

The challenge Meadows faces was summed up by Rosenbaum. “According to him, it seems like everything was within his official duties,” she said during the proceeding. “And that just cannot be right.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.