January 6 panel threatens contempt vote after Mark Meadows withdraws
The leaders of the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection are threatening to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress after his lawyer said Tuesday that his client will cease cooperating with the panel. In an abrupt reversal, Meadows attorney George Terwilliger said in a letter that a deposition would be “untenable” because the January 6 panel “has no intention of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that former President Donald Trump has claimed are off-limits because of executive privilege. Terwilliger also said he learned over the weekend that the committee had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications provider that he said would include “intensely personal” information. “As a result of careful and deliberate consideration of these factors, we now must decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for a deposition,” Terwilliger wrote in the letter. The committee’s Democratic chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, and Republican vice chairwoman, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, said in a statement that they will have “no choice” but to vote on recommending contempt charges against Meadows if he does not show up for a previously scheduled closed-door deposition Wednesday. “Tomorrow’s deposition, which was scheduled at Mr. Meadows’s request, will go forward as planned,” Thompson and Cheney said in a statement. Meadows’ decision not to cooperate is a blow to the committee, as lawmakers were hoping to interview Trump’s top White House aide about Trump’s actions during and ahead of the violent attack of his supporters. They had also hoped to use Meadows as an example to other witnesses who may be considering not cooperating as Trump has filed legal challenges to block the panel’s work. Lawmakers on the committee have blasted Meadows’ reluctance to testify, citing privilege concerns, while he is also releasing a book this week that details his work inside the White House. Thompson and Cheney said they also have questions about documents Meadows has already turned over to the panel. “Even as we litigate privilege issues, the Select Committee has numerous questions for Mr. Meadows about records he has turned over to the Committee with no claim of privilege, which includes real-time communications with many individuals as the events of January 6th unfolded,” they said in the statement. Thompson and Cheney said the panel also wants to speak to Meadows about “voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts” that could be turned over to the committee by the National Archives in the coming weeks. Trump has sued to stop the release of those records, and the case is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The two committee leaders did not comment on Terwilliger’s claim about subpoenas to third-party communications providers. The committee in August issued a sweeping demand that telecommunications and social media companies preserve the personal communications of hundreds of people who may have been connected to the attack but did not ask the companies to turn over the records at that time. Terwilliger said in a statement last week that he was continuing to work with the committee and its staff on a potential accommodation that would not require Meadows to waive the executive privileges claimed by Trump or “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,” he said then. Thompson said then that the panel would “continue to assess his degree of compliance” and would take action against Meadows or any other witnesses who don’t comply, including by voting to recommend contempt charges. The House has already voted to hold longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt after he defied a subpoena, and the Justice Department indicted Bannon on two counts. In halting cooperation, Terwilliger cited comments from Thompson that he said unfairly cast aspersions on witnesses who invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. A separate witness, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, has said he will invoke those Fifth Amendment rights, prompting questions from the committee about whether he would directly acknowledge that his answers could incriminate him. Thompson said last week that Clark’s lawyer had offered “no specific basis” for Clark to assert the Fifth and that he viewed it as a “last-ditch attempt to delay the Select Committee’s proceedings,” but he said members would hear Clark out. The committee has already voted to recommend contempt charges for Clark, and Thompson has said it will proceed with a House vote if the panel is not satisfied with his compliance at a second deposition on December 16. In his new book, released Tuesday, Meadows reveals that Trump received a positive COVID-19 test before a presidential debate. He also reveals that when Trump was later hospitalized with COVID, he was far sicker than the White House revealed at the time. Trump — who told his supporters to “fight like hell” before hundreds of his supporters broke into the Capitol and stopped the presidential electoral count — has attempted to hinder much of the committee’s work, including in the ongoing court case, by arguing that Congress cannot obtain information about his private White House conversations. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Court temporarily delays release of Donald Trump’s January 6 records
A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked the release of White House records sought by a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, granting — for now — a request from former President Donald Trump. The administrative injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit effectively bars until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over Friday. The appeals court set oral arguments in the case for Nov. 30. The stay gives the court time to consider arguments in a momentous clash between the former president, whose supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and President Joe Biden and Congress, who have pushed for a thorough investigation of the riot. It delays the House committee from reviewing records that lawmakers say could shed light on the events leading up to the insurrection and Trump’s efforts to delegitimize an election he lost. The National Archives, which holds the documents, says they include call logs, handwritten notes, and a draft executive order on “election integrity.” Biden waived executive privilege on the documents. Trump then went to court, arguing that as a former president, he still had the right to exert privilege over the records, and releasing them would damage the presidency in the future. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected those arguments, noting in part, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.” She again denied an emergency motion by Trump on Wednesday. In their emergency filing to the appeals court, Trump’s lawyers wrote that without a stay, Trump would “suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent President.” The Nov. 30 arguments will take place before three judges nominated by Democratic presidents: Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of Biden. Given the case’s magnitude, whichever side loses before the circuit court is likely to eventually appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The White House on Thursday also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation. His lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows “remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege.” “It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict,” Terwilliger said. The committee late Thursday threatened to begin contempt proceedings against Meadows if he doesn’t change course and comply. “Simply put, there is no valid legal basis for Mr. Meadows’s continued resistance to the Select Committee’s subpoena,” the committee wrote to Terwilliger, saying it would view Meadows’ failure to turn over documents or appear at a scheduled deposition on Friday as “willful non-compliance.” The House has already referred former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
