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A federal appeals court on Monday rejected an attempt by Mark Meadows to move an election interference case against him from Georgia to federal court, ruling that Meadows, Donald Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff, had not demonstrated that his alleged criminal conduct was related to his duties under the former president.
The three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to uphold a lower court opinion from September. The panel wrote witheringly in its 47-page opinion, authored by a Bush-appointed conservative judge, that the federal removal statute that Meadows’ lawyers had been attempting to invoke “does not apply to former federal officers.”
What’s more, Chief Judge William Pryor added, even if it did, Meadows’ “participation in an alleged conspiracy to overturn a presidential election was not related to his official duties.”