Judge Smacks Down Meadows, Clark’s Bids to Push Back Georgia Surrender

A federal judge on Wednesday denied 11th-hour bids by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and onetime Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to avoid arrest in a criminal case out of Fulton County, Georgia, where they are charged alongside Donald Trump and 16 others with scheming to keep the former president in power. Both men had begged for emergency stays of arrest as part of larger requests that their cases be booted to federal court, arguing their work as “federal officers” justified the shift. In a scorching response filed on Wednesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office called Clark–who had whined he was being “rushed” to arrange a flight down to Atlanta ahead of a Friday deadline to surrender–“wrong on the law, wrong on the facts,” and urged the judge to deny the ask. In a pair of 6-page rulings issued less than three hours later, U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones wiped out both men’s requests, writing in his order on Meadows that “the clear statutory language for removing a criminal prosecution” did not support his motion.