Mark Meadows Caves, Agrees To Cooperate With January 6 Committee

Disregarding Donald Trump’s bogus assertion of executive privilege over his attempted coup d’etat on January 6, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows has now decided to cooperate with the January 6 Committee. What, did he decide that “I’m too pretty to go to jail for Donald Trump“? (Not a problem for Steve Bannon who is a slovenly pig and probably enjoys making his own toilet wine at home).

The Washington Post reports, Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows cooperating with Jan. 6 committee:

Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff at the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, is cooperating with the House committee investigating the pro-Trump insurrection, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), said Tuesday.

“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney,” Thompson said in a statement. “He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition.”

Meadows is the highest-profile member of Trump’s inner circle who is known to be cooperating or who the committee has publicly acknowledged is cooperating. Committee members have previously said many people with connections to the events of that day have voluntarily engaged with investigators, but they have not specified who those individuals are or how high up they were in the Trump administration.

Chairman Thompson, in his statement, said that the committee “expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive.”

“The committee will continue to assess his degree of compliance with our subpoena after the deposition,” Thompson concluded.

CNN first reported Meadows’s cooperation. First on CNN: Meadows cooperating with January 6 investigators. “Thompson told CNN on Tuesday evening that the panel has received “probably about 6,000 emails” from Meadows via his attorney and is “in the process of going through it.” He said Meadows’ deposition is scheduled for next week.”

Details of the deal Meadows struck with the committee were not made public. While Meadows has now produced records for the committee and will sit before it, he could still try to claim executive privilege to protect certain pieces of information, making the cooperation fragile.

In a statement, Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger III, told The Washington Post that Meadows and his team “continue to work with the Select Committee and its staff to see if we can reach an accommodation that does not require Mr. Meadows to waive Executive Privilege or to forfeit the long-standing position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress.”

“We appreciate the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics,” Terwilliger said.

The bipartisan committee is investigating the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob determined to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden’s presidential win. The riot left five people dead and injured some 140 members of law enforcement who faced a barrage of sticks, bear spray, flagpoles and other items used as weapons.

Earlier this month, White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su sent a letter to Terwilliger notifying him that President Biden will not assert executive privilege or immunity over the documents and deposition requested by the committee related to his client.

As Thompson issued his statement on Meadows, federal judges were questioning whether Trump has the power to go to court to keep White House documents secret from the congressional committee. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed skepticism about the role of the courts in settling disputes between a former president and the sitting president over the release of White House records.

Meadows is making the safe bet how this attempted obstruction of Congress is going to turn out for Trump. He doesn’t want to get hung out to dry.

On Twitter, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the committee, said Meadows “has a legal and moral obligation to cooperate with our committee.”

“I’m glad he has now agreed to appear and has already provided documents,” Schiff said. “We will evaluate the extent of his compliance after his testimony. We must reveal the full truth of what led to January 6.”

The news on Meadows’s cooperation deal comes a day after the select committee announced that it will move to hold Jeffrey Clark, a top official in the Trump Justice Department, in criminal contempt for not complying with its subpoena. A committee vote is expected Wednesday. Meadows’s decision to cooperate could spare him the same treatment.

Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser, has already been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena.

Steve Benen adds, Why Mark Meadows’ cooperation with the Jan. 6 investigation matters (excerpt):

It was the morning of Nov. 12, just a few weeks ago, when former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows defied a subpoena from the bipartisan congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. It was the afternoon of Nov. 12 when Steve Bannon was indicted for contempt of Congress after he defied a similar subpoena.

It’s hard not to get the impression that Meadows took note of the developments — because as NBC News reported yesterday, the North Carolina Republican is suddenly in a more cooperative mood.

[T]here are plenty of questions about why, exactly, Donald Trump’s former right-hand man in the West Wing shifted his position. Is Meadows concerned about an indictment? Are his lawyers giving him new advice? Is he low on cash and concerned about months of steep legal fees? For now, we don’t know.

We do know, however, that the former chief of staff has an important perspective that should advance the investigation. Indeed, as we’ve discussed, when Trump tried to hold onto power despite losing the 2020 election, Meadows played an especially pernicious role in the scheme.

It was Meadows, for example, who made a surprise visit to Georgia shortly before Christmas, checking in on an election audit after his boss leaned on local officials to help him. Around the same time, Trump’s top aide repeatedly pushed federal law enforcement to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories — some of which were quite weird. [See below].

In other words, this guy has a lot of important information to share with investigators.

Looking ahead, the fact that Meadows is now “engaging with” the investigatory committee is an important development — one that the former president almost certainly will not like — but it’ll be worth watching to see whether, and to what extent, the progress continues. As Politico noted, “No one seems to expect that Meadows is going to show up and spill the beans about what exactly happened on Jan. 6. Rather, many view this as a way for Meadows to act helpful in order to avoid a House criminal contempt citation and possible arrest like Bannon. The panel and Meadows will almost certainly find themselves at loggerheads over what information is privileged — which could send us right back to Square One.”

Also:

Brad Raffensperger: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spent more than four hours with the Jan. 6 committee yesterday. The Republican who oversees his state’s election system famously received a scandalous phone call from Trump after his defeat last fall, in which the then-president urged Raffensperger to find enough votes to make it appear that the GOP ticket won Georgia. That matter is already the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.

So Brad Raffensperger has already given his side of the strong-arming from Trump and Meadows in Georgia. Meadows needs to explain his role in the election interference in Georgia to the committee.

The Fulton County District Attorney who has impaneled a grand jury to investigate Trump’s election interference in Georgia will be most interested in what Raffensperger and Meadows had to say to the committee.