Left: Mark Meadows speaks with reporters at the White House in October 2020 while serving as chief of staff for then President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File). Right: Special counsel Jack Smith turns from the podium after speaking about a Trump indictment in August 2023 (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows tried to sue the head of the National Archives (NARA) and special counsel Jack Smith to get his hands on records that may have aided his defense in the 2020 election-focused Georgia RICO case, but that effort came to an end Tuesday due to a basic “jurisdictional defect.”
U.S. Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee sitting in Washington, D.C., wrote that he simply could not “reach the merits” of Meadows’ case based he lacked “subject-matter jurisdiction” — that is, he didn’t have the power to hear it.
Kelly explained that Meadows’ move to sue U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan, the head of federal agency NARA, in D.C. Superior Court was his undoing.
“After the Superior Court directed NARA to show cause why it should not be ordered to produce those records, NARA removed this action to federal court” and asked Kelly to “quash the Superior Court’s order,” the judge said. Because the D.C. Superior Court lacked jurisdiction, so did Kelly, the three-page dismissal order said.
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“The Superior Court lacked jurisdiction over this action brought against a federal agency absent a waiver of sovereign immunity,” Kelly wrote. “Meadows does not identify any waiver and, to the contrary, concedes that ‘[t]he Court may ultimately agree with the United States that sovereign immunity bars the D.C. Superior Court action to compel the production of documents from NARA and the Office of the Special Counsel.””
That “jurisdictional defect,” the judge added, was fatal to his case — and if Meadows really wants documents helpful to his Georgia RICO defense then he should exercise his “right to pursue evidence” within the confines of that criminal case.
In August, Meadows also issued a summons to Jack Smith and added him as a defendant in the lawsuit, the court docket shows. Kelly tacked on a footnote at the very end of his ruling noting that Smith was served but never joined NARA’s motion to quash.
Nonetheless, the judge said, the Meadows case was tossed “in full, as the jurisdictional defect applies equally to Smith.”
Law&Crime sought comment from Meadows attorney John Moran on the dismissal.
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