A federal appeals court panel on Monday rejected an effort by Mark Meadows, a White House chief of staff under former President Donald J. Trump, to move a Georgia election interference case against him to federal court.
The decision was made by judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump were among 19 defendants charged in August with racketeering and other crimes related to their efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Meadows has sought from the beginning to move his case out of state court, which would widen the jury pool to a geographic area with somewhat more support for Mr. Trump. He claimed that the allegations against him concerned actions he took as a federal officer and thus should be dealt with in federal court.
But in September, a federal judge sided with Atlanta prosecutors, writing that Mr. Meadows’s conduct, as outlined in the indictment, was “not related to his role as White House chief of staff or his executive branch authority.”
The appellate judges who heard the case, two Democratic appointees and one Republican, unanimously backed that ruling,
“At bottom, whatever the chief of staff’s role with respect to state election administration, that role does not include altering valid election results in favor of a particular candidate,” Chief Circuit Judge William Pryor, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote in his opinion.
