The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol on Monday unanimously voted to recommend contempt charges against former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for failing to comply with its subpoena.
“A small group of people have gotten a lot of attention because of their defiance” Committee chair Bennie Thompson said in his opening statement. “But many others have taken a different path and provided important information about January 6 and the context in which the riot occurred. Anyone who wants to cooperate with our investigation can do so. Nearly everyone has.”
Meadows had earlier cooperated in part with the committee, handing over some email and text message records, but he failed to sit for a deposition last week and refused to turn over a slew of other documents, citing former President Donald Trump’s claims of privilege.
As a result, the nine-person, Democrat-run committee recommended that the House of Representatives find Meadows in contempt of Congress, as they did in October with Steve Bannon, who had not cooperated at all.
If the Democratic-controlled House votes to find him in contempt of Congress — as they did with Bannon — the case would then be turned over to the Justice Department. If the Justice Department charges him, he could face up to a year in jail if found guilty.
“History will record that in a critical moment in our democracy, most people were on the side of finding the truth, of providing accountability, of strengthening our system for future generations,” Thompson said before the committee’s vote. “And history will also record, in this critical moment, that some people were not.”
The panel’s vice chair, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, said that Donald Trump, Jr., as well as right-wing Fox News hosts Laura Inghram, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade, lobbied Meadows on January 6 to encourage Trump to tell his supporters to go home after they had breached the Capitol.
“Hours passed without necessary action by the president,” Cheney said, “These non-privileged texts are further evidence of pres Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes.”
Cheney read aloud text messages from Trump Jr., Kilmeade, Inghram and Hannity to Meadows that she said “urged immediate action by the president” on January 6. “Please get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished,” Cheney said Kilmeade texted.
Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger, argued in a letter to the committee on Monday that a contempt referral for Meadows “would be contrary to law, manifestly unjust, unwise, and unfair.” He wrote that the contempt of Congress statute was never intended to apply to “good-faith” assertions of executive privilege, and that prosecuting a senior presidential aide would be “unwise” because it could damage the institution of the presidency.
But the committee’s contempt report dismisses the privilege argument on the grounds that the sitting president, President Biden, has not exerted privilege over the records in question. They also noted that several of the documents Meadows already turned over would be in violation of the privilege claims if they were legitimate.
Among the documents Meadows gave the committee was a PowerPoint presentation titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for JAN 6,” which was initially intended to be distributed to members of Congress, Thompson noted in a letter to Terwilliger last week.
Meadows also wrote in a January 5 email that the National Guard would be present in Washington the following day “to protect pro Trump people,” according to the contempt report.
The contempt report also described a January 5 email in which Meadows said the National Guard would be present in Washington the following day “to protect pro Trump people.” The committee wrote that Meadows said many more Guardsmen would be on standby, but it did not offer other details about the exchange.
The committee also attached to the report a transcript of the questions they would have asked Meadows had he shown up. The transcript cited text messages between Meadows and a senator in which they discussed then Vice President Mike Pence’s “power to reject electors” thereby potentially changing outcome of the election. In one of the texts, Meadows “recounts a direct communication with President Trump who, according to Mr. Meadows in his text messages, quote, ‘thinks the legislators have the power, but the VP has power too,’ end quote.”
After the select committee advances the contempt charge Monday, Democratic leadership plans to bring it to the floor for consideration by the would House as soon as Tuesday.
The House select committee, created by Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this year, is investigating the January 6 attack, when thousands of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol as Congress counted the electoral votes, a largely ceremonial final step affirming President Biden’s victory. Lawmakers were sent fleeing amid the riot, which led to the deaths of five people and the arrests of hundreds more. Trump, who encouraged his supporters to “walk over” to the Capitol during the Stop the Steal rally, was impeached by the House one week later for inciting the riot but was later acquitted by the Senate.
