The South Carolina Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that Mark Meadows, who served as former U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, must testify before a special Georgia grand jury investigating alleged interference in the 2020 election vote count.
The highest judicial body in South Carolina, where Trump’s former chief of staff resides, has upheld a lower court ruling in late October that ordered Meadows to comply with the subpoena, even though he had filed an appeal arguing that proper documents had not been filed to request his presence in Georgia, CNN has reported.
«We have reviewed the arguments raised by (Meadows) and find them to be manifestly without merit,» the South Carolina Supreme Court said in its ruling.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the investigation, needed to get approval from a South Carolina judge before she could compel Meadows to testify, since he lives in another state, ‘The Hill’ has picked up.
Meanwhile, the original subpoena was supposed to have Meadows appear as early as Wednesday, though it is now unclear whether that date will still stand.
The case was initiated after an alleged conversation surfaced in January 2021 in which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to do what he could to find the just over 11,000 votes needed to reverse Joe Biden’s victory.
After learning the news of the subpoena, the legal team of Meadows, who was President Trump’s chief of staff during the last stages of his term, has acknowledged that it plans to appeal the ruling, according to the US newspaper ‘The New York Times’.
Willis already cited Meadows in August this year, noting that he had been part of a meeting, which was also attended by Trump himself, in which rhetoric about allegations of voter fraud and certification of votes in Georgia and other states was addressed.
Willis has previously accused Meadows of attempting to attend an audit of election results in Georgia and of being involved in the aforementioned phone call to Raffensberger.
