The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in early July on presidential immunity has now been invoked in Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' 2020 election-related prosecution of former President Donald Trump, albeit not by Trump himself in this instance.

Instead, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has urged the nation's highest court to intervene on his behalf and move his case from the state court to a federal court, according to Atlanta News First.

The Georgia case has been on hold since June when the state's appellate court announced that it would consider whether or not Willis should have been disqualified from the case over allegations of ethics violations and the appearance of impropriety and conflicts of interest.

Meadows brings federal immunity claim to Supreme Court

NBC News reported that former White House Chief of Staff Meadows had attempted to remove his case from state court to federal court last year but was denied by a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Meadows previously pleaded not guilty to two criminal charges pressed against him by DA Willis -- an alleged violation of the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act, and the alleged solicitation of public officials to violate their oaths of office.

Willis criminally indicted Meadows along with former President Trump and 17 others as part of an alleged conspiracy to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.

Plea for intervention and removal to federal court

In a 47-page petition filed with the Supreme Court, attorneys for Meadows argued that the high court's recent ruling on presidential immunity confirmed what should have already been made clear by federal statute -- that former federal officials enjoy a level of immunity from state prosecution for or related to actions taken while in federal office.

Unfortunately for Meadows, and prior to the Trump v. United States ruling, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected his claimed immunity and the effort to transfer his case from the Georgia court to a federal court.

The appellate court's decision was "egregiously wrong, wholly unprecedented, and exceptionally dangerous," and has now been sharply undermined by the Trump ruling.

"That decision makes clear that federal immunity fully protects former officers, often requires difficult and fact-intensive judgment calls at the margins, and provides not just a substantive immunity but a use immunity that protects against the use of official acts to try to hold a current or former federal officer liable for unofficial acts," Meadows' attorneys wrote.

They added, "All of those sensitive disputes plainly belong in federal court."

11th Circuit used a wrong and outmoded "test" for Meadows' immunity claim

At another point in the petition, Meadows' attorneys wrote that "a White House Chief of Staff facing criminal charges based on actions relating to his work for the President of the United States should not be a close call -- especially now that this Court has recognized that federal immunity impacts what
evidence can be considered, not just what conduct can form the basis for liability."

The former chief of staff's lawyers asserted that the 11th Circuit panel had relied on an obsolete "test" for his claim of federal immunity that had already been expanded upon and replaced in the relevant statute by Congress -- even as the panel implored Congress to take the action that it seemingly ignored.

"Any test that relegates to state court sensitive questions about whether and to what extent the Chief of Staff’s activities in service of the President can form the basis of a criminal prosecution has gone seriously awry," they added. "The decision below is not just wrong, but dangerously so. The Court should grant review, or at the very least vacate and remand in light of Trump."