In a routine, one-sentence order, the Supreme Court dealt a major legal blow to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Tuesday, refusing to move the Georgia election interference charges against him from state to federal court, NPR reports. Meadows is one of 18 people indicted in state court on charges of illegally conspiring to keep then-President Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. Were Meadows to have been tried in federal court, the charges against him almost certainly would be dismissed by the Trump Justice Department. Instead, Meadows faces state charges in the sprawling election tampering conspiracy case dating back to 2020.
Trump was indicted on similar state charges, but the Supreme Court earlier this year granted him broad immunity from prosecution for his official acts, and presumptively immune beyond that. Meadows sought to leverage that decision to apply to him, contending that the charges against him should at least be moved from state to federal court because he was a federal officer at the time the alleged conspiracy took place. But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, ruled that Meadows is no longer a federal official, and that even if he were, his actions were "not related to his official duties." Among other things, Meadows was on the 2020 phone call with Trump when the then-president unsuccessfully sought to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to flip the state vote. Or as Trump put it in the tape-recorded conversation: "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have."
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