A federal appeals court ruled Monday that former Donald Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows cannot transfer his 2020 election interference case in Georgia to a federal court, The Guardian reports. The court said he cannot do that because he is not currently a federal official. The court also ruled that Meadows would not have qualified for such a transfer because the conduct he was charged with did not relate to his official duties as Trump’s last chief of staff. The latest legal defeat could mark the end of the road for Meadows to have his case transferred from Fulton County Superior Court to federal district court in Atlanta, unless he wins an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court . The issue for Meadows has been whether his involvement in the call or his involvement in the so-called fake electors scheme were within the scope of his official duties as a White House chief of staff, as he argued, or whether he was engaged in campaign activity, as prosecutors maintain.
Meadows was charged in August with violating the state racketeering statute alongside Trump and other co-defendants by Atlants-based prosecutor Fani Willis over their efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. The indictment also included a charge against Meadows for his role in setting up Trump’s recorded phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, asking the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the battleground state. Meadows filed to transfer his case to federal court – a move that would allow him to seek dismissal of the charges on federal immunity grounds – but had the motion rejected by the federal district judge Steve Jones.
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