Appeals court won’t rehear Mark Meadows bid to move Georgia case to federal court

A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s request it hear his bid to move his criminal charges in the Georgia 2020 election racketeering case to federal court.

The decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals serves another blow to Meadows, who had sought to have the case moved under a federal law that he claimed should let him be tried in federal court, arguing he was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff when the alleged actions took place.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court had already ruled against Meadows. The full court decided against hearing his arguments Wednesday.

Meadows had hoped to move courts to assert immunity from the indictment, a tactic that could’ve imperiled the case brought by Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis (D) against Meadows, former President Trump and more than a dozen others.

The vast indictment alleges a conspiracy in which Trump and many of his supporters tried to overturn the results of the presidential election in Georgia. It is one of four indictments Trump faces.

A three-judge appeals panel ruled in December that Meadows was ineligible to move the case, arguing former federal officials, as opposed to current ones, cannot do so under the law.  

Even if the law had applied to former federal officials, the judges ruled in December, Meadows still could not leverage the statute because he didn’t establish he was acting in his official role.

Meadows’s only course of action now would be to seek recourse at the Supreme Court.