PHOENIX — Mark Meadows, who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, has asked that the Arizona election-subversion-related prosecution against him be moved from state court to federal court — the same legal maneuver he unsuccessfully tried in a separate election interference case in Georgia.
The U.S. District Court in Arizona has set a Sept. 5 hearing to consider his request, which argues that he was acting as a federal officer and that his actions were within the scope of the president’s chief of staff.
“Mr. Meadows has the right to remove this matter because he has a federal defense of Supremacy Clause immunity to the State charge and Congress has provided that federal courts are the appropriate forum to adjudicate such issues,” his attorneys said in a July 26 motion. “The conduct giving rise to the charges in the indictment all occurred during his tenure and as part of his service as White House Chief of Staff.”
Meadows lawyer George J. Terwilliger III echoed that sentiment Thursday, saying in a statement that “the Constitution and laws as passed by Congress dictate” the case should be considered by the federal judiciary. The function of federal officials, “let alone a White House Chief of Staff, are not subject to supervision and control by state authorities,” Terwilliger said.
A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who brought the case against Meadows, declined to comment.
Meadows has pleaded not guilty to nine felonies related to his alleged role in trying to subvert Joe Biden’s win in Arizona after the 2020 presidential election. He is one of 18 defendants indicted in April by a state grand jury, which determined that the defendants engaged in crimes including conspiracy, forgery and fraud when they tried to deliver the state’s 11 electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden.
Some grand jurors wanted to indict Trump, according to a motion filed last week by state prosecutors, who urged the grand jury not to indict him. Trump was described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign, reached a cooperation agreement last week that allows her to avoid jail time. Another defendant — Loraine Pellegrino, a GOP elector and political activist — saw most of the charges against her dismissed last week after she pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge.
In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows was among those close to Trump who allegedly evaluated a plan for how legislatures could overturn the will of voters through appointing alternate slates of Trump electors. Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) was among the GOP members of Congress who communicated with Meadows about a version of such a strategy, according to text messages obtained by a U.S. House committee that investigated the origins of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Meadows was charged last year in Fulton County, Ga., with criminally conspiring to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in that state and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer for his involvement in Trump’s January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) during which Trump tried to pressure the official to reverse Biden’s victory. The latter charge was dismissed this year, with the judge overseeing the case saying the indictment lacked “sufficient detail.”
Meadows testified in federal court that he had no role in the effort. Prosecutors in Georgia, however, have introduced evidence that showed Meadows in December 2020 emailing about the elector plan with a longtime Trump campaign aide.
In July, he took his fight to try to throw out the charges against him in Georgia to the U.S. Supreme Court. He asked the justices to overturn a lower-court ruling that rejected claims that his alleged conduct was tied to his official federal duties. His request came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling that found Meadows had not proved that his alleged conduct, charged as part of a sweeping criminal racketeering case, was related to his official duties as Trump’s most senior White House aide.
Meadows’s petition to the Supreme Court sharply criticized the 11th Circuit decision, describing it as “the first court ‘in the 190-year history of the federal officer removal statute’ to hold that the statute offers no protection to former federal officers facing suit for acts taken while in office.”
Holly Bailey contributed to this report.