Mark Meadows, former chief of staff for President Donald Trump, is asking to move charges against him in a Georgia case over alleged 2020 election interference to federal court, where his lawyer says they plan to ask a judge they be dismissed.
“Mr. Meadows is entitled to remove this action to federal court because the charges against him plausibly give rise to a federal defense based on his role at all relevant times as the White House Chief of Staff to the President of the United States,” an attorney for Mr. Meadows wrote in a filing Tuesday.
He was also charged with “unlawfully soliciting, requesting, and importuning” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office via a phone call about the state’s votes.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in a press conference after the grand jury’s vote that arrest warrants have been issued, and defendants have until noon on Aug. 25 to voluntarily surrender.
Acts of Racketeering
“Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se: arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the President’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the President,” Mr. Meadows’s attorney wrote in the filing. “One would expect a Chief of Staff to the President of the United States to do these sorts of things.”
“Can you send me the number for the speaker and the leader of PA Legislature. POTUS wants to chat with them,” the text read.
The indictment claims, “This was an overt act in futherance of the conspiracy.”
It lists the following Nov. 25, 2020, meeting with Pennsylvania state legislators as a continuance of the alleged conspiracy, as well as Mr. Meadows’s participation in meetings with political adviser John McEntee in December 2020, when Mr. McEntee was asked to draw up plans to delay Congress’s joint session on Jan. 6, 2021.
Seeking Dismissal
Mr. Meadows’s attorneys are seeking to dismiss the charges entirely at a “later date,” and are filing to move the case to federal court in order to “halt the state-court proceedings against Mr. Meadows.”“That will allow for the timely consideration of Mr. Meadows’s defenses, including his federal defense under the Supremacy Clause, without requiring him to defend himself in state court simultaneously.”
Given that he was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff, “this is precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official’s duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits, and that the removal statute shields against.”
