Mark Meadows Must Testify in Georgia Election Probe: South Carolina Supreme Court

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows speaks to members of the press outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington on Aug. 28, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must testify to a grand jury in Georgia that’s investigating possible election-related misconduct, South Carolina’s top court ruled on Nov. 29.

“We have reviewed the arguments raised by Appellant and find them to be manifestly without merit,” South Carolina’s Supreme Court said in a brief ruling.

Lawyers for Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, filed a request with a South Carolina court stating that Meadows is a “material witness” in the probe into possible misconduct regarding the 2020 presidential election.

Willis has cited Meadows’s involvement in a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting with former President Donald Trump Trump and others to discuss the certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia, as well as his visit the following day to the Cobb County Civic Center in Marietta, where absentee ballot signature matches were being made, as evidence that he should be questioned in the investigation.

Meadows, who worked in the White House during the Trump administration, has claimed he is shielded by executive privilege. He also said in a recent filing that South Carolina law does not apply to Georgia’s request in a South Carolina court to compel Meadows to appear in Georgia to testify.

South Carolina’s Uniform Act to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses from Without a State in Criminal Proceedings allows the ordering of South Carolina residents to testify in out-of-state proceedings if a resident has been found to be a “material witness” in a prosecution or grand jury investigation.

Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.

Because of that arrangement, the Georgia grand jury is not actually a grand jury and is therefore outside the scope of the South Carolina law, Meadows had argued. He pointed to a legal dictionary defined as a body of people who sit and “decide whether to issue indictments.”

South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Edward Miller rejected the arguments, finding in October “that the witness is material and necessary to the investigation and that the state of Georgia is assuring not to cause undue hardship to him.”

The Supreme Court ruling upheld Miller’s order.

Meadows had originally been ordered to testify Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether that would be rescheduled.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who also lost a legal battle over a subpoena from Willis, testified to the grand jury earlier this month.

Meadows has been fighting investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating Jan. 6 before eventually refusing to do an interview.

The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.