Willis: Reject Meadows, Clark Bids to Halt Arrests

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis urged a judge on Wednesday to reject bids by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to prevent their arrests in the Georgia election interference case, The Hill reported.

Meadows and Clark are seeking to block Willis from arresting them if they don’t turn themselves in by noon on Friday.

Willis charged Meadows, Clark, former President Donald Trump and 16 others in state court last week over their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Both Meadows and Clark are attempting to move their charges from state court to federal court, in the hope of claiming constitutional immunity and other defenses to have their charges dismissed.

In the wake of the grand jury’s vote on the indictment, Meadows rapidly filed paperwork to move his charges to federal court, with Clark and David Shafer, another co-defendant, filing similarly days later.

While Shafer has voluntarily surrendered, Clark and Meadows asked a federal judge on Tuesday to prevent their arrests.

Meadows has a Monday court hearing scheduled to determine where his case will continue; court filings show that Willis declined to extend her Friday deadline for Meadows, indicating that she plans to immediately issue an arrest warrant if he fails to turn himself in.

To shield him from arrest, Meadows requested that the judge immediately allow his case to move forward in federal court without a hearing or issue an order preventing his arrest before he goes to court on Monday.

“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,” Meadows’ attorney, John Moran, wrote in court filings, according to The Hill.

Unlike Meadows, who is only trying to move the charges against him to federal court, Clark is trying to move the charges against him and addressing the special purpose grand jury, which previously heard evidence and recommended charges but did not vote on the indictment.

Clark is arguing that the special purpose grand jury was a civil proceeding and not a criminal one, which would mean that the state proceedings would be automatically paused. If a party attempts to move a criminal case to federal court, however, the state proceedings continue until the judge makes a determination about where the case should proceed.

Clark asserts that the state proceedings and arrests should have been automatically paused when he filed paperwork to move his charges. Using the same legal grounds as Meadows, he also asked the judge to block his arrest.