"Very bad signal for Trump": Experts say ruling against Mark Meadows may doom Trump's defense

A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a bid by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his Georgia election case to federal court, upholding a September ruling that determined Meadows' reported actions in the racketeering case were not connected to his official government duties. 

In August, an Atlanta grand jury indicted Meadows, former president Donald Trump, and 17 other co-conspirators on felony racketeering charges over Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Following the indictment, Meadows implored a federal court to intervene after Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis refused his request to delay arrest. The former top Trump aid and his lawyers have argued that Meadows is "differently situated" from the other alleged co-conspirators because of his status as a former federal official, purporting that the charges brought against him in the indictment are related to his time in a federal role, making him "immune" from local prosecution. "Absent this Court's intervention, Mr. Meadows will be denied the protection from arrest that federal law affords former federal officials," Meadows' lawyers wrote to U.S. District Court Judge Steven Jones at the time.

A three-judge appellate court panel — composed of Chief Judge William Pryor and Judges Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu — seemed doubtful of Meadows's claims while listening to oral arguments on Friday, as noted by the Washington Post. The court ultimately ruled that the federal removal statute Meadows sought "does not apply to former federal officers, and even if it did, the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows's official duties.”

“Even if Meadows were ‘an officer,’ his participation in an alleged conspiracy to overturn a presidential election was not related to his official duties,” Pryor wrote in the nearly 50-page opinion.

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal noted that Pryor is a notorious right-wing judge.

"It was, to put it mildly, a total body slam," Kaytal told MSNBC. "As you see this opinion was written by Chief Judge Pryor, who is not just someone some people call conservative, he's a legendary conservative jurist, extremely conservative. And, he had none of it with respect to Meadows' arguments. Basically to summarize what this long opinion says ... look, if you are the White House chief of staff, launching a coup is not in your job description. That's the opinion, plain and simple."

Katyal said Meadows can try to appeal to the Supreme Court but "I don't think there's any chance that this case is going to be something that the Supreme Court is going to grant and rule for Mark Meadows. This is going nowhere fast."

In September, Meadows took a gamble by appearing on the witness stand. Willis subsequently seemed to imply that he may have committed perjury by doing so, with his testimony sharply undercutting his efforts to see his case moved to federal court. 

"And after insisting that he did not play 'any role' in the coordination of slates of 'fake electors' throughout several states, the defendant was forced to acknowledge under cross-examination that he had in fact given direction to a campaign official in this regard," Willis wrote in a brief after Meadows's testimony. "The Court has ample basis not to credit some or all of the defendant's testimony," a footnote in the filing argued.

Meadows is one of five defendants in Willis' indictment who have tried to move their case out of Georgia. The Washington Post reported that the others — Jeffrey Clark, Cathy Latham, David Shafer, and Shawn Still — have pending appeals requests before the 11th Circuit, following the rejection of their removal requests from the lower courts.

Following Monday's opinion, some legal experts claimed that Meadows's rejection offers a grim prediction for Trump's own immunity claims, which he has touted repeatedly in several of his legal cases.

"Although Meadows loss in the 11th circuit is on removal grounds, the analysis bears strong resemblance to the analysis for immunity, both concerning whether the alleged conduct was part of his official duties as [chief of staff]. And that casts a shadow on his and Trump's immunity claims," tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman.

"There's a greater significance to 11th Circuit decision rejecting Meadows' bid to get GA trial into federal court," former special counsel for the Department of Defense and NYU law professor Ryan Goodman wrote on X/Twitter. "Courts are inhospitable to Trump's claims of immunity/supremacy clause defense. Chief Judge pens the opinion: the alleged conduct was not a presidential function."

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Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig agreed that the ruling bodes poorly for the former president. 

"This opinion is meticulous, it’s airtight. This judge, Judge Pryor and the others on the panel, they go through and systematically address and dissect Mark Meadows’ arguments. And you could almost just global search and replace Meadows for Trump here," Honig said on CNN, according to Mediate.

"If Mark Meadows was outside his job of Chief of Staff, it almost follows that Donald Trump would have been outside his job as president and what they were doing," he added. "So it wouldn’t at all surprise me if what Judge Pryor and his colleagues were doing here was sort of saying Supreme Court, here’s a way you can follow us and get to the same conclusion. I think it’s a very bad signal for Trump."