The House is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to hold former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear before the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The vote comes less than 24 hours after the nine-person committee recommended Meadows, a former member of the House, be held in contempt.
“A small group of people have gotten a lot of attention because of their defiance,” Committee chair Bennie Thompson said Monday before their vote. “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.”
If the Democratic-controlled House finds Meadows in contempt, the matter will be referred to the Justice Department, which will then decide whether to press charges. Republican leadership has been encouraging members to vote against it.
In November, the House voted to find Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt after he refused to comply with a subpoena, and he was then charged by the Justice Department with two counts of contempt. He has pleaded not guilty but faces up to a year in prison on each charge.
Meadows had at first partially cooperated 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 Trump’s claims of privilege.
On Monday, the panel’s vice chair, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, said that Donald Trump, Jr., as well as right-wing Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, 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’ attorney, George J. Terwilliger, claimed in a statement Tuesday that Meadows had never “stopped cooperating as is widely reported.” He insisted Meadows has “fully cooperated,” noting that he has provided “documents in his possession that are not privileged and has sought various means to provide other information while continuing to honor the former president’s privilege claims.”
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 the 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.”
The committee has issued subpoenas to several other members of Trump’s inner circle, including former top adviser Stephen Miller and former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Conservative activist Dustin Stockton, who promoted rallies leading up to January 6 although not the Stop the Steal rally itself, and Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, both sat for interviews with the January 6 select committee on 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 Mr. 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.
