Republican Attorneys Urge Judge to Rule Against Mark Meadows

A group of more than a half-dozen veterans of Republican presidential administrations is urging a Georgia state judge to reject efforts by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to refer Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' inquiry into the Trump campaign's efforts to overturn the result of the state's 2020 election to federal court.

In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on August 15, attorneys for Meadows and former Trump official Jeffrey Clark—two of Trump's 18 co-defendants in the case—argued that Meadows was acting in an official capacity at the time he allegedly texted a state election official asking whether there was a way to speed up Fulton County's signature verification process to have results prior to the vote certification on January 6, 2021, and that the Trump campaign could "assist financially."

While most legal observers noted there was nothing in his attorneys' appeals absolving him from allegations that he furthered Trump's efforts to change the result of the election, the filing argued that state or local election officials had no right to charge him in the first place because he was a federal official seeking to ensure the integrity of a federal election.

"This is precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official's duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits, and that the removal statute shields against," his attorneys argued.

Others argue that is an incorrect reading of the law.

In an amicus brief filed with the court on August 24, a group of eight top attorneys and judges led by former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Paul Waxman, a Democrat, argued that Georgia officials were well within their right to use the courts to defend the integrity of their state's elections—arguing that it "is Georgia, not the federal executive, that is responsible for administering the State's selection of its presidential electors.

"The Constitution entrusts the administration of federal elections to the States," the brief reads. "It deliberately insulates such administration from the President and his staff. Consistent with that constitutional design, the federal-officer removal statute does not permit removal here."

Meadows' defense is flawed in other ways, the brief argues.

While Meadows, who has already failed in an attempt to avoid arrest, maintains he was acting in an official capacity as a federal official, no part of the chief of staff's duties include the administration of elections, the brief argues.

The brief's authors also argued that Meadows' attorneys' claims that he was immune from charges was in itself incorrect. While Congress enacted the so-called "federal-officer removal statutes" out of express concern that government officials might be prosecuted at the state level over official actions they take that are unpopular with local populations, Meadows—or any federal official—has no right to involve themselves in how a state runs its elections.

"It is Georgia, not the federal executive, that is responsible for administering the State's selection of its presidential electors—including assuring the integrity of that selection," the brief argues. "Allowing it to do so, including by leaving it to the State's own courts to adjudicate any alleged violations of the State's criminal laws, is in no way contrary to, and in fact is fully consistent with, the purpose of the federal-officer removal statute."

Congress and Georgia's state Legislature, however, argued that they have some leeway over the conduct of state courts.

On August 17, Georgia state Senator Colton Moore asked Governor Brian Kemp to call for a special session to investigate charges brought against Trump by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

One week later, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan claimed to have sent a letter to Willis' office demanding information and communications with the Department of Justice and Executive Branch officials over serious concerns that the charges were politically motivated, repeating similar arguments that Meadows' attorneys made in his defense.

Aspects of the indictment, Jordan claimed, "give rise to questions about whether your office is seeking to criminalize under Georgia law certain speech of federal officers, including the President, that is protected by the First Amendment. Especially given the potential for states to target certain federal officials, such indictments implicate core federal interests."

But even that approach, Jordan's critics claim, fall short of any real standing—particularly given the debatable notion that the way states run their elections is a protected federal interest.

"This transparent effort to interfere with the legitimate state law enforcement function by the federal legislative branch is an insult to our Federalist system under the Constitution, and that it is an attempted obstruction of justice in spirit, if not at law," Norm Eisen, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment in 2020, told Newsweek.