The full effect of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling on Donald Trump’s criminal cases isn’t yet known, saying nothing of its implications for the future of the presidency and the country. But while the application of Trump v. United States is slowly playing out in the GOP presidential nominee’s cases, another beneficiary of the ruling may be his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Meadows cites the July 1 ruling several times in his new Supreme Court petition, seeking the justices’ help in moving his Georgia state 2020 election interference case to federal court. Both the federal trial and appeals courts rejected Meadows’ claim, with the latter deciding that federal officer removal isn’t even available to former officers like Meadows and that, even if it was, his Georgia charges don’t relate to his official duties so he needs to stay in state court.
Represented by top conservative lawyer Paul Clement at the Supreme Court, Meadows calls the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling “egregiously wrong, wholly unprecedented, and exceptionally dangerous,” arguing that “what matters is a federal officer’s status at the time of the conduct at issue, not her status at the time the prosecutor or plaintiff gets around to filing suit.”
Even before the high court majority bestowed broad immunity on his former boss, there was reason to think that the justices might take interest in Meadows’ case. The 11th Circuit admittedly broke new ground in its ruling, with the three-judge appeals court panel acknowledging that “in the 190-year history of the federal-officer removal statute, no court has ruled that former officers are excluded from removal.”
Notably, that appellate ruling was authored by a jurist well-respected in conservative circles, the circuit’s chief judge, William Pryor. Also notable is that the two Democratic-appointed judges on the panel agreed with the legal outcome but wrote separately to lament the “nightmare scenario” of not extending removal to former officers, arguing that “not extending the federal-officer removal statute to former officers for prosecutions based on their official actions during their tenure is bad policy, and it represents a potential threat to our republic’s stability.”
To be sure, they noted that Meadows’ case still shouldn’t go to federal court even if former officers could get removal, because he “has not established that the State has charged him for or relating to an act under color of his office as White House chief of staff.” Nonetheless, to address their broader concerns, they called on Congress to amend the law to expressly include former officers. “The far better course is for this Court to intervene,” Meadows urged the justices in the petition, citing the Trump immunity ruling for, among other things, the proposition that “federal protections cannot prevent the distortion of federal decisionmaking by current officeholders if they expire as soon as they leave office, as this Court reiterated just this past Term.” The Georgia state prosecution brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against Trump, Meadows (they’ve both pleaded not guilty) and others is currently on hold pending a separate pretrial appeal over the defense attempt to disqualify Willis. Meadows’ petition adds yet another wrinkle if the justices’ agree to review his appeal. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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