A federal judge on Wednesday denied former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark's and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' requests for emergency stays of their arrest warrants in Fulton County, Georgia, where the two are charged alongside former President Donald Trump in a case accusing them of racketeering and other crimes for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones said Clark's arguments weren't supported by the law.
Clark, who had hoped to avoid surrender after filing to remove his case to federal court along with Meadows, in their motions to transfer the case argued the actions that gave rise to the charges in the indictment were related to their work as federal officials and that the state charges against them should be dismissed.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had set a deadline of noon on Friday for the people indicted last week in the election subversion case to turn themselves in. Her team has been negotiating bond amounts and conditions with the lawyers for the defendants before they surrender at the jail.
In a filing Wednesday, Willis' team argued that Meadows has failed to demonstrate any hardship that would authorize the judge to prevent his arrest. The filing notes that other defendants, including Trump, had agreed to voluntarily surrender by the deadline.
In a second filing, Willis' team argued that Clark's effort to halt any Fulton County proceedings while his motion is pending amounts to an attempt "to avoid the inconvenience and unpleasantness of being arrested or subject to the mandatory state criminal process."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.