A federal appeals court on Monday unanimously rejected former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows' bid to move his portion of the Georgia election racketeering case to federal court.
“Meadows, as a former chief of staff, is not a federal 'officer' within the meaning of the removal statute,” the judges ruled in a 49-page opinion written by Chief Judge William Pryor. A concurring opinion by Judge Robin Rosenbaum added that “even if Meadows were an officer,” his participation in an alleged conspiracy to overturn a presidential election was not related to his official duties.
Meadows was the first of five defendants in the Georgia election racketeering case who tried to move his case out of Fulton County’s state court. He is charged with two state felony counts – racketeering and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer – in the Fulton County case stemming from former president Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, and has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones rejected Meadows in September, and the former Trump aide appealed that ruling to the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. A three-judge panel heard oral arguments on the matter last Friday.
The judges seemed unconvinced at the hearing, and most legal observers expected his appeal to be unsuccessful.
Mark Meadows Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Notably, the judges upheld Jones’ ruling that Meadows failed to provide a “colorable” defense and did not prove that the alleged acts supporting the charges against him were carried out under the official responsibilities of his office. That's the requirement under the federal statute that would have allowed him to move his case out of state court.
“Meadows fails to prove that the conduct underlying the criminal indictment relates to his official duties,” Pryor wrote in Monday's opinion.
Meadows, who provided testimony for his hearing before Jones, had argued that the expansive and 24/7 nature of his job as chief of staff meant that nearly anything he did was an official duty. Jones, and the appellate judges, were unconvinced.
“Meadows cannot have it both ways,” Pryor wrote. “He cannot shelter behind his testimony about the breadth of his official responsibilities, while disclaiming his admissions that he understood electioneering activity to be out of bounds.”
What’s more, the judges ruled on a second question: whether the statute applied to former federal officers, a question which no court has squarely addressed in nearly two centuries of jurisprudence.
“We acknowledge that, in the 190-year history of the federal-officer removal statute, no court has ruled that former officers are excluded from removal,” the court wrote in its ruling. The court said that the federal removal application in Trump’s New York case “fails to persuade us.”
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows (C) leaves the Richard B. Russell Federal Building with his lawyers on August 28, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Megan Varner/Getty Images
According to legal observers, the ruling on the former officer question opens a door for Meadows to appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court chose to side with the Fulton County District Attorney’s position that a “plain text” interpretation of the law is correct, and since the wording of the law does not mention former federal officers, the court accepted the more conservative interpretation of the law.
“The presumption that Congress intentionally omitted any reference to former officers applies “with particular force” to this statute,” Pryor wrote.
Monday's ruling reinforced an October ruling by the same court involving both judges Pryor and Rosenbaum in the case of the U.S. v Pate that also rejected a broader interpretation of the federal removal statute.
The law in question in the case is the federal office removal statute, a Reconstruction-era effort designed to ensure a fair trial for federal officers being prosecuted with potentially political intentions in local, ex-Confederate, jurisdictions following the U.S. Civil War. Section 1442 of the portion of U.S. Code governing the federal judicial system says civil or criminal cases brought in state court against federal officers “for or relating to any act under color of such office” can be removed to federal court.
However, the appellate court ruled Monday there is no basis to apply the law to a former federal official.
“Meadows identifies no precedent from either the Supreme Court or this Court permitting removal under section 1442(a)(1) by a former officer,” Pryor wrote.
Meadows also tried to argue that a federal court would be a more proper venue for him to argue a federal immunity defense, but again the 11th Circuit Judges simply rejected this idea, writing: “We disagree.”
People standing in line to enter the US. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta before oral arguments in former Donald Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' bid to move his Fulton County criminal charges from state to federal court. Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon/The Messenger
Rosenbaum, in her concurring opinion, raised the core concern judges had about the federal officer removal statute not applying to former officers. That concern is the hypothetical scenario in which local jurisdictions might pursue former officers the moment they leave office as retribution for unpopular policies.
“Not covering former federal officers comes with a great potential cost to our government and those who serve in it,” she wrote, further noting that “I respectfully urge Congress to amend Section 1442 (a)(1) to protect former federal officers.”
An attorney for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several other co-defendants in the Fulton County indictment have also tried their hand at using Section 1442 to move their cases, all failed, and all have also appealed to the 11th Circuit, though those hearings have yet to be scheduled. They include ex-Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, and ‘fake’ electors David Shafer, Cathy Latham and Shawn Still.
Joe Whitley, a former U.S. attorney in Georgia, said that for Clark, Shafer, Still and Latham “this is obviously precedent setting on their removal actions.”
The Meadows removal could be appealed again to the 11th Circuit “en banc,” meaning all 12 judges would review the decision, and to the U.S. Supreme Court. If Meadows were to do so, the others may seek a stay of their own appeals, Whitley said.
Georgia State University Law Professor Clark Cunningham said Monday’s opinion amounted to a “stunning rebuke of Mark Meadows’ efforts to avoid a state court trial.”
“The million dollar question at this point is whether the Meadows case now goes on to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Cunningham, who noted the probability of a Supreme Court review was higher because the appellate court “broke new legal ground” when they addressed the former federal officer question.