Former Trump Chief of Staff Flips, is Cooperating with Jan 6th Committee
The work of the January 6th select committee continues to astound and astonish of late, with potential witness after potential witness finding themselves in untenable positions. Stuck between a rock and a contempt charge.
The latest to reverse course and decide to cooperate is none other than former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who this week signaled his willingness to work with the Democratically-led fishing expedition.
Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s last chief of staff and was involved in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, is now cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Advertisement - story continues belowRep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the panel, said in a statement that Meadows has been “engaging” with the panel through his lawyer, providing records to the committee “and will soon appear for an initial deposition.”
Meadows was subpoenaed by the committee in late September for records and testimony regarding his and Trump’s activities before and during the Capitol riot.
The news was rather unexpected:
“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition,” the committee said in a statement Tuesday. “The Select 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.”
Advertisement - story continues belowHis lawyer initially said Meadows wouldn’t cooperate with the committee because of Trump’s plans to assert executive privilege, an argument dismissed by the committee, whose members will vote this week to hold former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in contempt of Congress for ignoring the panel’s subpoenas.
“As we have from the beginning, we 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,” Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement Tuesday. “We appreciate the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics.”
The committee has been widely criticized on the right side of the aisle, with many considering their investigation to be nothing more than a re-do of Trump’s second impeachment, this time with a Democratic majority deciding the outcome.