There is a surprising announcement from the January 6th Select Committee. They have been established to investigate the events that took place at the Washington D.C. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This announcement came from Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), where they said that the committee would be holding Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress if he continued to refuse to come before a voluntary deposition. Meadows is the former Chief of Staff for former President Donald Trump.
According to Politico, Cheney and Thompson wrote a letter that clearly stated their deposition, which was scheduled at Mark Meadows’ request, would go forward as they had planned. And if Meadows was not willing to appear, the Select Committee would have no other choice but to bring the contempt proceedings to Congress. They would be recommending that Congress, where Meadows once served, refer him to face criminal prosecution.
The letter from the Select Committee went further, noting that there were numerous questions about the information that Meadows had already given to the committee. The specifically said that the committee would need to hear from Meadows himself about the significant amount of information that was found on his personal phone and email accounts. Both of these were turned over to the National Archives because of the Presidential Records Act.
Earlier this week, CNN reported that Meadows’ attorney released a letter that made the Select Committee aware that his client would no longer be participating in the investigation. George J. Terwilliger II, the attorney, wrote that they had agreed to provide thousands of pages of pertinent documents. He noted that his client had been willing to appear voluntarily, without the unneeded compulsion of the subpoena the Select Committee decided to use. Meadows does not believe that there should have been a deposition to answer questions about non-privileged matters.
Terwilliger added in the letter that the Select Committee has made his client’s appearance “untenable.”
He ended the letter saying, “In short, we now have every indication from the information supplied to us last Friday – upon which Mr. Meadows could expect to be questioned — that the Select Committee has no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege.”
The result of these actions by the Select Committee caused Meadows, at the request of his attorney, to decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for the deposition.
It was also reported by Politico that the decision Meadows made was in some part motivated by the reality that the Select Committee subpoenaed his private phone records. Some even question whether such activity is even legal.
Meadows told Real America’s Voice that the cooperation that they had offered to the Select Committee had been ignored and without even communicating with them, the committee issued the subpoena to a third-party carrier trying to get information. They would have appreciated more courtesy than that.
Meadows said, “At this point, we feel like it’s best that we just continue to honor the executive privilege, and it looks like the courts are going to have to weigh in on this.”
It has been reported elsewhere that Meadows is a target of the Select Committee because of his close connection with former President Trump. The Committee said in September that Meadows apparently communicated with officials at the state level and even in the Department of Justice. He was allegedly involved in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election or at least prevent the election’s certification.
This move from the Select Committee comes on the heels of holding former Trump advisor Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress. This led to Bannon being indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. And still, there’s even question as to whether the Select Committee has even legally been created…