Donald Trump speaks as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (R) listens from the South Lawn of the White House July 29, 2020 (Alex Wong/Getty Images).
After a district judge last week resoundingly rejected Mark Meadows’ arguments to remove his Georgia racketeering (RICO) case to federal court, the former White House chief of staff for then-President Donald Trump filed an “emergency” motion Monday seeking to put the ruling on hold pending the outcome of an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
In the latest filing, Meadows advanced four arguments that the effect of the ruling should be put on hold as the former White House chief of staff ramps up an appeal.
Meadows claims he has “at least a substantial case on the merits” on a “novel question,” that the lack of a stay pending appeal would irreparably harm him, that a stay pending appeal in his case would not “prejudice the State, nor other defendants in state court, because it would not prevent other ongoing proceedings,” and that “a stay is in the public interest.”
Meadows’ high-powered lawyers at McGuireWoods asserted that the rights their client claims to have “would be effectively nullified” if there is no stay and that state gets its way.
“Absent a stay, the State will continue seeking to try Meadows 42 days from now on October 23, 2023,” the lawyers wrote. “If the State gets its way, Meadows could be forced to go to trial—and could be convicted and incarcerated—before the standard timeline for a federal appeal would play out.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Steve CarMichael Jones, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled Friday that Meadows failed to clear the “quite low” bar to show that his criminal case should be removed from state court to federal court given his status as a federal officer at the time of the charged conduct.
The judge found that only one of the eight alleged Meadows overt acts outlined in the Fulton County RICO indictment “could have occurred within the scope of Meadows’s federal office.”
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As a result, Judge Jones concluded federal court was not the appropriate venue in Meadows’ case and ordered the matter remanded to the Fulton County Superior Court.
Meadows is accused of participating in a racketeering enterprise which “refused to accept that Trump lost, and […] knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
The grand jury indictment secured by Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) alleged that Meadows joined efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss by unlawfully soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to break the law “by unlawfully altering, unlawfully adjusting, and otherwise unlawfully influencing the certified returns for presidential electors for the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia[.]”
At the end of his emergency motion, Meadows warned there would be a “chilling effect” if he does not get the stay he seeks.
“The very premise of Supremacy Clause immunity and the Federal Officer Removal Statute is that it is vitally important to the proper functioning of our Federal Government that federal officials be free from state arrest and prosecution when carrying out their duties,” the motion said. “For the State to proceed to trial and seek to impose a verdict, it would give rise to the very ‘chilling effect’ that federal law goes out of its way to protect against.”
Judge Jones has already ordered a response to the emergency motion from the state by noon Tuesday.
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