White House Acting Chief of Staff Mark Meadows listens throughout the each day coronavirus task force briefing on the White House in Washington, D.C., April 18, 2020.
Al Drago | Reuters
Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows asked a federal judge Tuesday to instantly move the Georgia criminal election interference case out of state court with the intention to protect him from being arrested, court filings showed.
In its place, the federal court could simply issue an order barring Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from arresting Meadows this week, his attorney proposed in the 19-page filing.
Willis has already rejected Meadows’ request for an extension, the filing noted.
Meadows and 18 other co-defendants in Willis’ case, including Trump, face a Friday deadline to give up to jail.
No less than two defendants have already done so: Pro-Trump attorney John Eastman and Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall were booked and released earlier Monday.
Former President Donald Trump has said he’ll give up on Thursday.
Meadows seeks to maneuver the state-level case to federal court. A federal judge in U.S. District Court in Atlanta scheduled a Monday morning hearing on Meadows’ request.
But Meadows’ attorney John Moran argued in the most recent court filing that his bid to maneuver the case will probably be harmed if he’s arrested before that hearing.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, Mr. Meadows will probably be denied the protection from arrest that federal law affords former federal officials, and this Court’s prompt but orderly consideration of removal will probably be frustrated,” Moran wrote.
The attorney wrote that Willis has already “rejected out of hand” a request to defer his arrest deadline until in the future until after the federal court hearing.
The filing included an email from Willis, who on Monday morning wrote, “I’m not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to give up themselves to the court. Your client is not any different than some other criminal defendant on this jurisdiction.”
But Moran argued that Meadows “can be irreparably injured if the state criminal proceeding will not be stopped.”
“He can be subject to arrest, to the State’s pre-trial criminal restrictions, and, ultimately, to risks of criminal sanction,” the defense attorney wrote.
The request got here two days after Meadows asked the federal court to dismiss the fees stemming from Willis’ probe of the efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Meadows is charged within the indictment with one count of racketeering and one count of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer. The latter count is expounded to Meadows’ participation in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call through which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to undo Biden’s win within the state.
