Lawyers for Donald Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who is charged in Georgia with taking part in a broad conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, will ask a judge Monday to move the case against him from state to federal court.

The hearing at a federal courthouse in Atlanta marks the first step in a series of potential legal skirmishes Meadows will have to navigate as his lawyers mount the case that he was acting as a federal official when he worked with Trump to challenge the 2020 Georgia election results and thus is immunized under federal law.

Meadows's attorneys have indicated in court filings that they hope U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones will decide at or shortly after Monday's hearing whether to move the case to the federal system - and then rapidly take up a separate motion they have filed seeking to dismiss charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D).

The hearing could be an inflection point with the potential to influence the fate of several defendants in the sprawling Georgia case.

Four of the 19 defendants have followed Meadows's lead and sought to move their case to federal court: Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer, Georgia State Sen. Shawn Still, who was one of the fake electors in 2020, and Cathy Latham, former GOP chair for Coffee County and a member of the Georgia Republican Party's executive committee. Given that Meadows was a White House official working on behalf of the sitting president at the time, if a federal judge is not persuaded by his argument, the others may have a tough legal road ahead as well.

The hearing will be the first of what will likely be a regular rotation of appearances by the Georgia defendants in state and federal courtrooms to litigate pretrial issues - a reminder of the case's complexity and the potential for delays before it can be ultimately heard by a jury.

The 98-page indictment filed by Willis describes a series of acts Meadows took in the weeks after Trump lost the presidential election, including meeting with state lawmakers in Michigan and Pennsylvania and visiting a Georgia site where signatures on absentee ballots cast in the election were being verified. It alleges those efforts were part of what she has charged was an illegal racketeering conspiracy to overturn the results.

The indictment alleges that Meadows also illegally solicited a public official to violate his oath by joining Trump on a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021. During the call, Trump said he wanted to "find" enough votes to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.

In a court filing, Meadows's lawyers argue that all of those acts happened during Meadows's "tenure as White House Chief of Staff and are directly related to that role." They called the indictment "precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official's duties" that the Constitution and federal law prohibit.

In a 22-page filing last week, prosecutors countered that Meadows was assisting Trump's political campaign and not acting on behalf of the White House after the 2020 election. Meadows's actions were "all 'unquestionably political' in nature and therefore, by definition, outside the lawful scope of his authority as Chief of Staff," they wrote.

The district attorney's office also argued that by participating in political activity outside the scope of his job, Meadows violated the federal Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their official roles to influence an election. And prosecutors added that Meadows cannot claim to be immune from prosecution under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which protects federal officials from state prosecution for acts committed within the scope of their official duties, because he was acting with criminal intent, motivated by factors other than simply doing his job.

"Even if the defendant somehow had been acting as authorized under federal law (rather than directly contrary to it), that authority would be negated by the evidence of his 'personal interest, malice, actual criminal intent,'" they wrote.

Lawyers for Meadows and a spokesman for Willis declined to comment.

Prosecutors may call witnesses at Monday's hearing, creating the possibility of an early mini-trial to determine Meadows's motivations during the post-election period.

At least four witnesses were subpoenaed to appear and may testify, including Raffensperger; Frances Watson, former chief investigator for the Georgia secretary of state's office; and two Trump-aligned attorneys. The four officials interacted directly with Meadows after the 2020 election.

Watson met Meadows in December 2020, when the White House official traveled to suburban Atlanta to witness a state-run audit of absentee ballot signatures that Watson was overseeing. Trump called Watson the next day. In a text message included in the indictment, Meadows wrote on Dec. 27, 2020, inquiring if "there was a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially" - a message Willis's team could use to argue that Meadows was acting on behalf of Trump's campaign.

Kurt Hilbert and Alex Kaufman were campaign lawyers who also participated in Trump's call with Raffensperger and could presumably also be used by Willis to emphasize the campaign's involvement.

As for Raffensperger, he has been outspoken in his view that both calls were inappropriate because his office was in litigation with the Trump campaign over election issues at the time.

Hilbert, Kaufman and a lawyer for Watson did not respond to requests for comment. Spokesmen for Raffensperger and Trump declined to comment.

There is little legal precedent to the Meadows case and little legal guidance about what activities by a federal official are properly covered by the supremacy clause, according to Judith Miller, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School's Federal Criminal Justice Clinic. The law is intended to protect federal officials from criminal charges if they are carrying out their normal job functions - but it does not mean that a federal official can break the law with no consequences, she said. For example, Miller argued, if Meadows had gone to Georgia on official business and then shoplifted, he would not be able to claim immunity because he is a federal official.

"What constitutes the course of the federal duties? What if they do something in the course of their legal duties that is in fact objectively wrong?" Miller said. "This is a very unusual case and it is not a common defense - it's just unusual for federal officials to be charged in anything remotely connected to their federal work."

In court filings, Meadows cited the case of FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi, who shot and killed the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver during a standoff with federal officials at Weaver's cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. Idaho officials charged Horiuchi with manslaughter in 1997 but the case was moved to federal court at his request. Ultimately, a U.S. district court judge dismissed the case against Horiuchi, holding that he was immune from prosecution under Idaho law since he was "acting within the scope of his federal authority."

The Horiuchi opinion was later overturned on appeal but was not litigated further because an Idaho state prosecutor dismissed the charges.

Even if Meadows prevails procedurally in having the case removed from Fulton County state court, he could still fail to persuade the judge to dismiss the charges, said Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and senior FBI official.

"Meadows could win the battle and still lose the war," he said.

That would create an unusual scenario in which Meadows would be prosecuted by Willis's office under state law but in front of a federal judge. If convicted, he would not be eligible for a pardon by the president, as he would be if convicted under federal law, experts said.

Still, if Meadows is able to punt his case to federal court, it could benefit him when it comes time to choose a jury, experts said. The jury pool for a federal case would be composed of residents from across northern Georgia, which is more politically conservative than Fulton County and a potentially friendlier audience for the former Trump official and Republican congressman.

A federal judge previously rejected Trump's attempt to move one of the other three cases pending against him from state to federal court. Trump made the request in New York, where he is charged under state law with falsifying business records in connection to hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump argued he reimbursed lawyer Michael Cohen for making the payments to Daniels after he took office to protect his presidency and thus was acting as a federal official. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein found that the charges pertained to Trump's personal life and did not involve his official duties as president.

Monday's hearing is a reminder of Meadows's key role, not just in Georgia but potentially also in the two federal cases that have been brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith.

Research for Meadows's 2022 memoir, "The Chief's Chief," made a key appearance in Trump's federal indictment in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving office. The indictment cites an audio recording made by a writer and the publisher of Meadows's book in which Trump can be heard describing what he said was a classified document, as papers can be heard rustling.

The Justice Department also obtained hundreds of Meadows's texts about the election effort in the summer of 2022, which were then shared with Smith's team after the special counsel was appointed in November, The Washington Post has reported. Meadows subsequently turned over additional documents to Smith's office in response to a subpoena and testified to a federal grand jury this spring. Smith brought charges against Trump earlier this month for illegally attempting to overturn the election.

However, Meadows is barely mentioned in the federal indictment related to the election, which charges only Trump with illegal activities but alleges he was assisted by six unindicted co-conspirators, none of whom appear to be Meadows.

That absence has sparked significant speculation among Trump's allies, who have questioned whether Meadows's testimony has helped Smith build his cases. The Post has previously reported that Trump had long ago soured on Meadows and complained about him to others, questioning the loyalty of his once-ardent defender.

A person close to Meadows previously told The Post that Meadows acknowledged his relationship with Trump had fractured but felt as though he was required by law to provide testimony and documents to Smith's office.

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