Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is asking a federal judge to step in and protect him from being arrested in Atlanta for his RICO indictment in Fulton County, Georgia.
Meadows filed a motion to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on Tuesday, asking the federal court to help him avoid arrest later this week after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis rejected Meadows' proposed deadline extension and threatened to arrest him if he failed to agree to the bond terms and voluntarily surrender.
"District Attorney Fani Willis has made clear that she intends to arrest Mr.
Meadows before this Court's Monday hearing and has rejected out of hand a
reasonable request to defer one business day until after this Court's hearing," the filing reads. "Absent this Court's intervention, Mr. Meadows will be denied the protection from arrest that federal law affords former federal officials, and this Court's prompt but orderly consideration of removal will be frustrated."
Willis gave Meadows, former President Donald Trump and the other 17 defendants named in last week's sweeping indictment until August 25 at noon to turn themselves into Fulton County authorities. Trump plans to surrender on Thursday, August 24.
Meadows, who was charged with two felonies in the case, had asked Willis for a "modest extension" until Monday, but the district attorney dismissed the request as being nonsensical since the two weeks she had given defendants was already "a tremendous courtesy."
"I am not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender
themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other
criminal defendant in this jurisdiction," Willis told Meadows' lawyers in a Tuesday email.
"At 12:30 pm on Friday I shall file warrants in the system," the district attorney said. "My team has availability to meet to discuss reasonable consent bonds Wednesday and Thursday."
Former federal prosecutor and former elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that unless the federal court grants Meadows' request for an extension, the former Trump official risks facing an arrest warrant if he does not surrender before Friday at noon. He added that it was highly unlikely Willis would have granted his request since it could jeopardize all of the deadlines in the case.
"If DA Willis allows one defendant to ignore what is otherwise a generous time frame for self-surrender, every defendant will seek an extension," McAuliffe said.
Jeffery Clark, a former Justice Department official who is one of the 18 co-defendants indicted alongside Meadows, also asked a judge on Tuesday to grant an emergency stay in the case, saying he didn't have enough time to get to Atlanta before Willis' deadline.
In the motion, which is part of a larger filing requesting the case to be moved to federal court, Clark's attorneys said he wanted to avoid "the choice of making rushed travel arrangements to fly into Atlanta or instead risking being labeled a fugitive."
Alternatively, Meadows asked the federal court to order Willis not to arrest him.
"That short-term, modest relief would prevent the irreparable loss of Mr. Meadows's
rights under federal law and allow this Court to consider the merits of removal in an
orderly fashion without any substantial prejudice to the State of Georgia," Tuesday's filing reads.
Meadows has already asked a federal court to order all the charges brought against him by Willis to be dismissed. The former official argued over the weekend that the charges "fall squarely within the scope" of his then-role in the federal government.
"As a federal official at the time of the charged conduct, he is immune from state prosecution under the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution," his attorneys wrote.
