An appeals court has denied Mark Meadows’ request for a hearing as he seeks to have his Fulton County election interference case removed to federal court.
On Wednesday the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Meadows’ request for a rare “en banc” hearing before all of the court’s 12 judges. That means Meadows last hope is an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meadows is the former chief of staff to then-President Donald Trump. Last year Fulton County prosecutors charged him with two felonies for his role in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Meadows was on Trump’s January 2021 call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, visited the scene of a Cobb County absentee ballot signature audit in December 2020 and allegedly played a major role in coordinating the Trump electors who cast ballots in Georgia and other states won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Meadows has sought to have his case removed to federal court, where he might get a more favorable jury pool drawn from across north Georgia. He has argued the removal was warranted because the actions cited in the Fulton indictment were taken in his capacity as a federal official.
A U.S. District Court judge in Atlanta rejected that argument last September, ruling that Meadows was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign, not as a federal official. In December, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit rejected his appeal.
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