Left: Mark Meadows (Fulton County Jail). Right: FILE — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks in the Fulton County Government Center during a news conference on Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File).
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put the final kibosh on serially unsuccessful efforts by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his Georgia racketeering (RICO) prosecution to federal court.
The effort to remove the prosecution from the Peach State court system is not, by any stretch, new. Meadows has repeatedly asked federal judges to give a federal court jurisdiction over his case. So far, at least, federal judges have repeatedly declined to do so.
Willis says the latest Meadows removal request — despite being the next, and last, move to the highest court up the chain — is simply not important or timely enough for the nine justices to deal with yet.
The oft–embattled district attorney also claims Meadows’ arguments “alternatively miscast the nature” of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ December 2023 rejection “or entirely omit relevant precedent.”
In his opening bid with the nation’s highest court, Meadows argued the 11th Circuit was the first court “in the 190-year history of the federal officer removal statute” to hold that “the statute offers no protection to former federal officers” for “acts taken while in office.”
Willis says this is all wrong.
“Petitioner mischaracterizes the Eleventh Circuit’s reading of the federal removal statute’s ordinary meaning as somehow flouting two centuries of precedent, despite the acknowledged fact that no court has ever actually confronted the issue,” the brief in opposition reads. “Although no other circuit court has had the opportunity to evaluate the Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning or to conduct their own analysis of the question, Petitioner insists that review must occur immediately.”
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To hear the DA tell it, the 11th Circuit is the first — and the only — appeals court to deal with the precise subsection of the federal removal statute at issue in the Meadows case.
Historically, the Supreme Court has been loath to intervene in cases without a so-called “circuit split.” The term refers to a situation where two or more federal appellate courts have considered the precise point of law — statutory or otherwise — being argued about and reached sharply different conclusions on how to resolve the dispute.
Here, Willis says, there’s just no split to weigh in on. Further, she argues, Meadows’ efforts are too-clever-by-half — and frame the 11th Circuit’s decision as out of step when, in fact, it’s the only such step.
“So while Petitioner decries the outcome below as novel, the decision would have been novel even if he had prevailed, simply because no other court had ever actually engaged with the issue,” the opposition brief continues. “Its novelty lies not in its outcome but in its inquiry. That novelty weighs against consideration of Petitioner’s arguments in this Court. Certainly, there can be no suggestion of a circuit split on the issue, in the sense that no other circuit has yet examined the question, and the decision is not in disagreement with any other authority because no other court has had the opportunity to weigh in.”
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Willis says the justices should continue the mostly-time-honored practice of waiting for a circuit split because “the issue would benefit from further percolation” at lower court levels.
The district attorney’s office also attempts to slap down an ancillary argument advanced by the defendant regarding immunity.
In late July, after being granted two key filing delays by Justice Clarence Thomas, Meadows filed his petition for writ of certiorari — availing himself of recent vintage legal arguments sourced from the landmark decision on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States.
Willis, in her 40-page brief in opposition filed Thursday, says Meadows is trying to cover far too much ground — and dirt that is not his — with the legal tarpaulin created by the Roberts Court in the immunity ruling.
A footnote in the opposition brief argues:
Throughout his petition, Petitioner places inordinate reliance upon Trump v. United States, despite the numerous and significant distinctions between that case and this one. Trump involved constitutional questions, while this case hinges on statutory interpretation and the assessment of specific evidence. Trump involved immunity, while this case involves only removal. And most significantly, Trump involved the utterly singular concerns related to the President’s immunity under the Constitution. The case did not purport to create a broader, “Executive Branch immunity” or otherwise seek to apply to officers such as Petitioner, whose role is not prescribed by the Constitution or even mentioned within it.
To hear Meadows tell it, the immunity decision “fully protects former officers” and could open the door for all of the president’s subordinates to enjoy certain legal presumptions — in terms of defenses.
“[A] White House Chief of Staff facing criminal charges based on actions relating to his work for the President of the United States should not be a close call — especially now that this Court has recognized that federal immunity impacts what evidence can be considered, not just what conduct can form the basis for liability,” Meadows argued.
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