Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, one of the coup plotters in the seditious conspiracy which led to the MAGA/QAnon violent insurrection on January 6, is trying to use the federal courts to obstruct the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol by filing a frivolous lawsuit in the District of Columbia District Court.
The Court should not entertain this frivolous bad faith claim brought for the improper purpose of unnecessary delay in the enforcement of a valid congressional subpoena. The Court should summarily dismiss this vexatious litigation and impose Rule 11 sanctions on Mark Meadows and his attorney.
Politico reports, Meadows sues Pelosi, Jan. 6 panel and its members:
Mark Meadows, facing the looming prospect of criminal contempt of Congress charges, is suing to block a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, arguing that it unconstitutionally intrudes on former President Donald Trump’s powers to invoke executive privilege.
Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe explains why this is a frivolous bad faith claim.
Meadows can’t assert executive privilege when neither POTUS nor the former president has invoked it. Any such privilege was waived by his tell-all book anyway. And his suit is also barred by the Speech or Debate Clause. https://t.co/uriVnxLpPw
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 9, 2021
Meadows has no conceivable basis for this frivolous suit. Its obvious motive is to try getting Trump back on his good side after outraging the former President with his tell-all bookhttps://t.co/sm13BEeiPS
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 8, 2021
The former White House chief of staff filed the suit Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Washington against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the members of the Capitol riot panel and the committee itself. His attorney says he’s been put in an “untenable position” of choosing to defy the committee — and risk criminal prosecution — or defy his former boss Donald Trump’s attempt to assert executive privilege to block his testimony.
Oh, Politico, always parroting GQP talking points.
Peter Keisler, who served as assistant attorney general and acting attorney general during the George W. Bush administration; Stuart Gerson, who served as assistant attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration and acting attorney general during the Clinton administration; and Alan Raul, who served as associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan, explained last month in an op-ed, On executive privilege, Mark Meadows has just about everything wrong:
Meadows, they say, is stuck in the middle of a “separation of powers” dispute, unsure whether to obey Trump or a congressional subpoena with which the sitting president has agreed to comply.
But Meadows and his counsel get just about everything wrong regarding the law and history they invoke. Legal precedent and settled constitutional principles militate strongly against acceding to claims of executive privilege by a former president seeking to cover up conduct that was both purely political and antithetical to the constitutional duties of his office.
First, executive privilege is an outgrowth of executive power that, as the Supreme Court reminds us, rests in “the President alone.” To be sure, the Supreme Court has recognized that a former president can argue that materials pertaining to his administration should be privileged, but given that he is a private citizen, unaccountable to the people and possessing no official authority, his views hold limited weight against the incumbent president. Indeed, the Supreme Court has recognized that it is the sitting president, as the people’s most recently elected representative and current custodian of the office’s interests, who is best positioned to determine whether to assert the privilege.
Second, executive privilege exists to protect the president’s ability to execute duties effectively for “the benefit of the republic.”; it therefore has limited scope. For example, it does not shield wrongdoing, and also does not extend to a president’s political interests (any more than it would extend to personal business interests).
Moreover, contrary to Meadows’s assertion, executive branch officials have long testified on critical issues. President Richard M. Nixon authorized his aides to speak on Watergate, and President Ronald Reagan allowed unrestricted testimony during the Iran-contra investigation. Senior officials from the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations testified before the 9/11 commission; Bush himself sat for over three hours of questioning. And when information was subpoenaed by the House committee on Benghazi, President Barack Obama ultimately allowed Congress to receive evidence it sought. Meadows’s counsel is simply wrong when he argues that Biden’s decision not to assert privilege is novel.
Meadows himself knows this. When he served in the House, Meadows had no problem issuing subpoenas and demanding that subpoenaed executive branch officials “come before Congress … under oath, and tell the truth.”
But this is what is most relevant: Executive privilege may not be invoked to hide a president’s personal wrongdoing. In the wake of the election, Meadows appears to have served Trump’s interests exclusively. Whatever the residual scope of a former president’s power to assert executive privilege over the objection of the incumbent president, it could not protect Meadows here. Meadows’s actions to aid and abet a failed candidate’s unlawful attempt to subvert the results of an election were not taken pursuant to any official duty, and thus may not be protected by invoking a privilege designed solely for official actions.
Third, there is no separation of powers dispute; both the elected executive branch and Congress have said Meadows should comply with the committee’s demands for information. It is only Meadows — and Trump, trying to assert armchair privilege from Mar-a-Lago — who disagree.
Finally, Meadows’s counsel’s invocation of a supposed “long-standing recognition that senior presidential aides, present and past, cannot be compelled to appear before Congress” also falls flat. That is because the United States judiciary has squarely rejected such categorical immunity. Even if some such immunity did exist, it would exist at the discretion of the president — the sitting president. Here, any claim Meadows has to the executive branch’s supposed prerogative of absolute testimonial privilege is eviscerated not only because Biden has permitted Meadows to testify, but also because Meadows was acting on behalf of Trump’s personal interests.
Congress is entitled to obtain the subpoenaed information in support of valid legislative purposes, such as clarifying the Electoral Count Act and better protecting its own members. And Biden, consistent with actions taken by his predecessors under comparable circumstances, has found no reason to shield it. Meadows and his counsel are free to criticize these decisions. But what Meadows cannot do is invoke a presidential privilege intended to benefit the republic to protect his own interests in defiance of the rule of law.
Politico continues:
The Jan. 6 select panel has signaled that it is preparing to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate, a move that would send the matter to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges. The panel has rejected Meadow’s claim, noting that current President Joe Biden has not asserted privilege to block Meadows’ testimony. Trump, a former president, has no role in asserting privilege anymore, they say — a position recently supported by another federal judge in Trump’s own lawsuit against the committee.
Asked about the new lawsuit, select panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the panel still planned to move forward with holding Meadows in contempt of Congress next week.
“We will fight it out in court, and we will move with as much expeditious format as we can,” he said.
Asked about Meadows’ claim the committee didn’t have “lawful authority” to seek information, Thompson said “in this town, every lawyer has at least one opinion.”
Another panel member, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said of the lawsuit: “Sounds like he’s trying to delay.”
You are correct, sir! Give that man a cigar.
What Politico leaves out is what Mark Meadows has already provided to the January 6 Committee without any assertion of it being subject to privilege.
David Edwards reports, REVEALED: Mark Meadows possessed ‘insane’ blueprint for military seizing ballots after Trump’s 2020 defeat:
Details of documents in the possession of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows show that there was a blueprint for members of the National Guard and U.S. Marshals to take control of the U.S. election system following former President Donald Trump’s defeat.
After Meadows decided to abruptly withdraw his cooperation with the House Jan. 6 Select Committee on Tuesday, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) revealed that Meadows had provided the committee with an email containing a 38-page PowerPoint slideshow titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN.”
Author Karen Piper reviewed portions of the slideshow and concluded that it was “nuts.”
Mark Meadows turned over an email with a presentation that was to be provided "on the hill" about Jan 6th. It's nuts. It's by ASOG and Phil Waldron and had these recommendations. pic.twitter.com/7qCNgu200N
— Karen Piper (@PiperK) December 9, 2021
“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Piper wrote on Twitter. She also described the document as “insane.”
One slide explains how National Guard in each state would be federalized to count only “legitimate” paper ballots. Meanwhile, U.S. Marshals would be tasked with providing a “protective perimeter around the locations.”
“A Trusted Lead Counter will be appointed with authority from the POTUS to direct the actions of select federalized National Guard units and support from DOJ, DHS and other US government agencies as needed to complete a recount of the legal paper ballots for the federal elections in all 50 states,” the document states.
Other recommendations include declaring a national security emergency. All electronic votes would be declared invalid under the plan and NASA astronaut Sid Gutierrez was slated to lead the task force.
The slideshow is dated Jan. 5, 2021, which was just one day before Trump incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A copy of the slideshow is available at Archive.org.
Sarah Burris adds, New info from Meadows gives the Justice Department a reason to consider criminal conduct: legal expert:
Legal expert and “Above the Law” writer Bradley Moss noted that the new revelations disclosed by Mark Meadows should be enough for the Justice Department to consider criminal conduct.
Meadows’ revealed that the White House was in discussions with members of Congress about overthrowing the 2020 election and went so far as to produce a PowerPoint presentation about the options available “on the hill,” the letter from House Select Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) explained.
A [seditious] conspiracy between the White House and members of Congress to overthrow the election and circumvent the electoral college state electoral slates is enough to qualify for criminal conduct, Moss argued.
The “only question at this point is whether the Justice Department views that as criminal conduct,” he tweeted.
It's clear from what has already been provided to @January6thCmte and reported elsewhere that efforts to circumvent the EC state electoral slates came directly from the White House. Only question at this point is whether DOJ views that as criminal conduct.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 8, 2021
Meadows reportedly turned over a trove of documents including emails and text messages from his personal email and phone, which aren’t supposed to be used for government business.
Mark Meadows was up to his eyeballs deep in the coup plot for January 6. It was planned, organized and directed from the Trump White House. The crime-fraud exception to executive privilege eviscerates the privilege. The coup plotters cannot hide behind executive privilege. In any case, it does not apply to the high crimes of sedition, insurrection and treason. These traitorous sonsuvbitches all need to be prosecuted for sedition and insurrection. The Justice Department needs to step up to the plate and do its job.
UPDATE: This retired colonel is about to become the John Dean of the January 6 committee. Rolling Stone reports, Anti-Democracy PowerPoint Circulator Says He Met with Meadows, Briefed Lawmakers: Reports:
Philip Waldron, a retired Army colonel who shared a PowerPoint presentation titled “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” detailing options for how to overturn the 2020 election, says he briefed lawmakers in Congress ahead of Jan. 6, according to reports from multiple outlets. Waldron also says he met with Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, to discuss election fraud several times, according to The Washington Post.
Phil Waldron, who works with the Allied Security Operations Group that @FannKfann nearly hired for her audit and later recommended audit team leader Doug Logan to her, worked on what can only be fairly described as a proposal for a coup d'etat by Trump. https://t.co/HzTpAcyE0A
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) December 13, 2021
Waldron told the Post that he went to the White House multiple times following the election and spoke with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on “maybe eight to 10” occasions. Meadows recently decided to stonewall the House committee investigating Jan. 6 after turning over more than a thousand documents. Included in those documents was an email referring to a PowerPoint similar to the one Waldron has circulated, although Waldron told the Post he did not send it to Meadows.
Waldron said that he briefed some senators — including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — in addition to a group of House members about his election fraud allegations using a similar PowerPoint presentation. The New York Times and The Guardian also reported that Waldron or his team briefed members of Congress on the presentation ahead of Jan. 6. The committee investigating Jan. 6 noted in a letter last week that a briefing of the presentation was to be provided “on the hill,” per the material Meadows turned over to the committee.
“The presentation was that there was significant foreign interference in the election, here’s the proof,” Waldron told the Post. “These are constitutional, legal, feasible, acceptable and suitable courses of action.”
According to multiple outlets that obtained a version of the PowerPoint similar to the ones Meadows handed to the committee, the presentation advocated having Vice President Mike Pence either reject electors from “states where fraud occurred” or replace them entirely with Republican electors who would support Trump. It also suggested declaring a “national security emergency” due to alleged “foreign influence and control of electronic voting systems” by China, which would delay the certification of Biden’s win. It further proposed declaring “electronic voting in all states invalid.” Thus far, however, no evidence of widespread or significant voter fraud to support these allegations has been brought to light, and Trump’s own Justice Department declared that there was no evidence of sufficient fraud that would have changed the electoral outcome.
Meadows, through his attorney, told The New York Times that he turned the email with the PowerPoint file over to the congressional committee because Meadows didn’t act on it, so it doesn’t fall under what Trump has tried to claim is protected by executive privilege. Meadows has used Trump’s executive privilege claim to justify his non-cooperation with the committee. He has filed suit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the committee investigating Jan. 6, stating that the committee’s “demand for documents is overbroad, overreaching and far too wide-ranging to be deemed anything other than a fishing expedition.”
Although Meadows may not have taken action on the PowerPoint, he did take a number of steps to try and subvert democracy and keep Trump in power despite his election loss. Meadows pressured Justice Department officials to investigate unverified allegations of election fraud, and Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote last week that Meadows replied “I love it” to a member of Congress who shared a “highly controversial” plan to appoint alternate electors in certain states.
According to what Waldron told The Post, Meadows asked him during one meeting, “What do you need? What would help?” A Post source familiar with the matter confirmed to the paper that Waldron and Meadows met in December at the White House, but the source said Meadows had “little or nothing to do” with Waldron. Waldron said that he and Meadows mostly communicated through Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Another Post source confirmed a separate November Oval Office meeting Waldron attended where Trump and some Pennsylvania lawmakers were present.
“I was just there,” Waldron told the Post of the Oval Office meeting. “He was more interested in talking to the legislators and understanding what happened in the Pennsylvania elections. … It was very informal. He had a lot of conversation with state legislators and senators and just asked them, ‘What do you think?’”
The committee investigating Jan. 6 is slated to vote next week on whether to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with its investigation. Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has already been indicted on two counts of criminal contempt for not cooperating with the committee’s subpoenas for documents and testimony.
What this describes is a coup d’etat plot not just from Trump’s inner circle, but by the Republican Party writ large, from state legislators to members of Congress. The Sedition Party. Some dare call it treason.
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Related: Politico reports, “Trump campaign lawyer authored two memos claiming Pence could halt Biden’s victory”, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/10/trump-lawyer-pence-biden-524088
A Donald Trump campaign lawyer wrote two legal memos in the week before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that claimed then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to refuse to count presidential electors from states that delivered Joe Biden the White House.
Link: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-a4d0-dac5-abff-a5ddcf600000
(Jenna Ellis tried to shield the memos behind attorney-client privilege, but the crime-fraud exception to privilege eviscerates the privilege. She was an active participant in a crime, an attempted coup d’etat. She is a seditious insurrectionist who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law).
The memos from then-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, which contain widely disputed legal theories about Pence’s ability to stop a Biden presidency, underscore Ellis’ promotion of extreme arguments that she promulgated amid Trump’s effort to reverse the election results. Her actions have remained largely below the radar as House investigators probe Trump’s inner circle.
A Dec. 31 Ellis memo delivered to Trump’s office suggested that Pence — who was constitutionally responsible for presiding over Congress’ counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6 — should simply refuse to open envelopes from states whose election results Trump considered to be fraudulent. That memo was described by ABC reporter Jonathan Karl in his recent book “Betrayal.” POLITICO is publishing it in full for the first time.
In a second, previously unreported memo dated Jan. 5, Ellis made a more technical legal argument that she delivered to Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s outside lawyers. Sekulow represented Trump during his first impeachment and in a series of legal battles during his administration, but he had minimal involvement in Trump’s election litigation. The exception was an early November Supreme Court case regarding Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots.
In the Jan. 5 memo, Ellis argued that key provisions of the Electoral Count Act — limiting Pence’s authority to affirm or reject certain electors — were likely unconstitutional. She concluded that Pence, while presiding over lawmakers’ counting of electors, should simply halt the process when their alphabetical proceeding reached Arizona.
Then, she said, he should declare that the state failed to meet the legal standard for certifying its own electors and “require the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing.”
“The states would therefore have to act,” she wrote.
Facing possible prosecution, Jenna Ellis is now dissembling, “it was just a theory, I didn’t mean it.” Bullshit.
Ellis said in a statement that her memos “were exploring legal theories” rather than wholesale endorsements of the legal strategies she was outlining.
“At no time did I advocate for overturning the election or that Mike Pence had the authority to do so,” Ellis told POLITICO. “As part of my role as a campaign lawyer and counsel for President Trump, I explored legal options that might be available within the context of the U.S. Constitution and statutory law.”
Ellis, also a close ally of former Trump lawyer and adviser Rudy Giuliani, worked closely with Giuliani in the aftermath of the 2020 election, traveling to multiple states to push Republican legislators in those locations to attempt to intervene before their presidential ballots could be certified. She later sought to convince state lawmakers to hold emergency sessions and attempt to submit alternate slates of Trump electors to Congress in advance of Jan. 6.
Ellis’ memos were written as other Trump advisers were laying out similarly extreme legal arguments for Pence to upend Biden’s victory.
Notably, Ellis’ memos did not go as far as those authored by lawyer John Eastman, another Trump adviser. Eastman claimed Pence had the authority to declare Trump the outright winner of the election by simply excluding dozens of Biden electors from Congress’ tally.
[P]ence ultimately rejected these arguments and counted the electoral votes certified by all 50 states, formally delivering victory to Biden. But Jan. 6 investigators have homed in on efforts by Trump’s inner circle to rationalize his attempted subversion of the election as they seek to understand his months-long campaign to remain in office.
David Badash reports, “GOP Senators and Congressmen were briefed on 38-page coup PowerPoint memo two days before insurrection: report”, https://www.rawstory.com/gop-senators-and-congressmen-were-briefed-on-38-page-coup-powerpoint-memo-two-days-before-insurrection-report/
“Two days before the January 6 insurrection several Republican U.S. Senators and Representatives were briefed on a 38-page coup PowerPoint memo. That document is being described as a roadmap for then-President Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency, invalidate all electronic votes, and move to have himself declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
It does not appear that any of the Republican lawmakers alerted the public to the in-process coup attempt. It is not known if they alerted the Dept. of Justice, FBI, or other law enforcement agency.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows turned the coup memo over to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, claiming it had been emailed to him but not implemented.
But the document itself calls for the lawmakers to be briefed.
“Senators and members of Congress should first be briefed about foreign interference, the PowerPoint said, at which point Trump could declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy,” The Guardian, which saw a version of the memo, added.”
It is only a matter of time until the January 6 Committee begins focusing on Republican traitors in Congress – it was an inside job.
Rolling Stone reports, “Mark Meadows Discussed a ‘Direct and Collateral Attack’ Plan to Overturn Election Results, Committee Says”, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-meadows-discussed-plan-overturn-election-jan-6-committee-1268735/
Mark Meadows wrote “I love it” in a Nov. 6, 2020, text message to a member of Congress who proposed a “highly controversial” plan overturn the election results by appointing alternate electors in certain states. The exchange was obtained by the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, and described in a letter informing the former chief of staff that the committee has “no choice” but to move forward with referring him for criminal contempt prosecution resulting from his refusal to testify.
The letter includes details about some of the thousands of pages of documents Meadows had already provided to the committee before reversing his decision to cooperate, including the text in which he said he loved the plan to keep Trump in office. Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote that the committee has an email from the next day, Nov. 7, that discussed appointing alternate electors as part of a “direct and collateral attack” after the election. He also writes that Meadows handed over another email from Jan. 5 that contained a 38-page PowerPoint briefing called “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” that was to go to people “on the hill.” A separate email from that same day, Thompson wrote in the letter, discussed having the National Guard on standby.
“All of those documents raise issues about which the Select Committee would like to question Mr. Meadows and about which you appear to agree are not subject to a claim of privilege,” Thompson wrote, adding that Meadows has also withheld “several hundred additional documents” from his personal email and more than 1,000 text messages based on privilege claims.
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