Capitol riot committee votes to hold ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt

Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina congressman turned Trump White House chief of staff, became the second former member of the House of Representatives to face the possibility of contempt of Congress charges on Monday after the select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection voted to refer him for prosecution for defying a congressional subpoena.

The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans voted unanimously to approve a report recommending that Mr Meadows “be found to be in contempt of Congress for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena,” and directing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “certify the report … to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, to the end that Mr Meadows be proceeded against in the manner and form provided by law”.

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Speaking just before the committee members voted, select committee chairman Bennie Thompson said the committee had spoken to more than 300 witnesses, received more than 30,000 records, and more than 250 “substantive tips” from its tip line since beginning the investigation.

“Day by day, we’re getting a clearer picture of what happened, who was involved, who paid for it, and where that money went. So I’m pleased to report we’re making swift progress. And before too long, our findings will be out in the open,” he said, adding that the committee would be holding public hearings to tell the story of 6 January “all at once, start to finish” and “not leave anyone guessing and not allowing it to fade into the memory of last week’s news”.

On the matter of Mr Meadows, Mr Thompson said the former White House chief of staff had “started by doing the right thing,” but later “changed his mind and told us to pound sand” on the same day his book, The Chief’s Chief, was published.

The Mississippi Democrat noted that Mr Meadows had recounted detailed conversations with former president Donald Trump in his book, as well as discussed them in television appearances.

“He has no credible excuse for stonewalling the Select Committee’s investigation,” he said.

“Whatever legacy he thought he left in the House, this is his legacy now. His former colleagues singling him out for criminal prosecution because he wouldn’t answer questions about what he knows about a brutal attack on our democracy,” Mr Thompson continued, adding that Mr Meadows “hasn’t left us any choice” but to find him in contempt.

“Mr Meadows put himself in this situation and he must now accept the consequences,” he said.

The panel’s top Republican, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, said the committee did not take the step of holding a former member and ex-White House chief of staff lightly, and had hoped to not have to take it before Mr Meadows stopped cooperating.

But Ms Cheney said the committee believes her former GOP colleague “is improperly asserting executive and other privileges,” but stressed that the contempt citation mainly pertained to his refusal to testify about non-privileged materials he had already provided to the committee.

“He has not claimed and does not have any privilege basis to refuse entirely to testify regarding these topics,” she explained before describing a number of the non-privileged messages Mr Meadows had turned over but was refusing to discuss with committee members.

“These text messages leave no doubt the White House knew exactly what was happening here at the Capitol,” she said.

“One text Mr Meadows received said: ‘We are under siege here at the Capitol,’” she said. “Another: ‘they have breached the capitol,’ and a third which said: ‘Mark. Protesters are literally storming the Capitol, breaking windows and doors, rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?’”

Ms Cheney related how Mr Meadows had received text messages from multiple Fox News personalities — including Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity — as well as his son, Donald Trump Jr, urging him to press the president to issue a message denouncing the violence and urging rioters to go home.

“These non privileged texts are further evidence of President Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes. And Mr Meadows’ testimony will bear on another key question before this committee: Did Donald Trump through action or inaction corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceedings to count electoral votes? Mark Meadows testimony is necessary to inform our legislative judgments. Yet he has refused to give any testimony at all, even regarding non privileged topics,” Ms Cheney said. “He is in contempt of Congress”.

“January 6 was without precedent. There has been no stronger case in our nation’s history for a congressional investigation into the actions of a former president ... our Constitution, the structure of our institutions, and the rule of law, which are at the heart of what makes America great, are at stake. We cannot be satisfied with incomplete answers or half truths, and we cannot surrender to President Trump’s efforts to hide what happened,” she said.

Another one of Mr Meadows erstwhile colleagues, California Representative Zoe Lofgren, recalled how she had wished him well when he resigned to become Mr Trump’s chief of staff, but said it was “shocking” how he had played “both an official and unofficial role in trying to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election,” as well as directing the Department of Justice to “investigate outrageous really crazy conspiracy theories,” as well as pressure Georgia election officials to try and overturn the results of that state’s presidential election”.

“We need to talk to Mark Meadows about that,” she said.

Speaking remotely from his Illinois district, Representative Adam Kinzinger — the panel’s only other Republican — said his former colleague “had committed a crime in this case — a premeditated one”.

“Mark Meadows’ actions demonstrate his contempt for Congress for the select committee, for his former colleagues, and for the integrity of the democratic process. He has clearly rejected this committee’s investigation. So now it’s time to see whether the Department of Justice can be more persuasive,” Mr Kinzinger said. “No one is above the law, not even a former president’s chief of staff. in a nation of laws, you cannot have it both ways.”

Mr Meadows is the third witness in the select committee’s inquiry into the worst attack on the Capitol since the 1814 Burning of Washington to face a citation for criminal contempt of Congress.

The first, ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress by a District of Columbia grand jury last month and will go to trial on those charges next summer. The second, ex-Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, has not yet had his contempt citation come before a vote of the full House because he has one more chance to comply with the select committee’s subpoena by appearing for a deposition on Thursday 16 December.

All three men have claimed that they cannot appear to give evidence before the select committee because their testimony would be shielded by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects communications between and among a president and his advisers.

According to the select committee’s report recommending contempt charges against Mr Meadows, the ex-White House chief of staff has already turned over thousands of documents to the select committee, including a now-infamous 36-slide PowerPoint presentation outlining a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election by way of a declaration of a “national security emergency” by then-president Donald Trump.

Despite his earlier cooperation with the committee, Mr Meadows halted those efforts one week ago after finding out that the committee had issued a subpoena for records of communications made with his personal mobile phone in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol. Although he was set to appear for a deposition to discuss those non-privileged documents last week, he failed to do so.

In a letter sent on Monday to select committee members, Mr Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, argued that citing the ex-congressman for contempt “would be contrary to law, manifestly unjust, unwise, and unfair” because Mr Meadows’ assertions of executive privilege have been made in good faith.

But Mr Thompson and his colleagues have argued that such claims fail to hold water because the current head of the executive branch, President Joe Biden, has heretofore declined to assert executive privilege with regard to documents and testimony pertaining to the events of 6 January.

In a letter to Mr Meadows’ attorney explaining Mr Biden’s decision, White House deputy counsel Jonathan Su explained that the president had found that asserting the privilege “is not in the public interest” because of the “unique and extraordinary circumstances” of the select committee’s probe into “an effort to obstruct the lawful transfer of power under our constitution”.

“The president believes that the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information reflecting an effort to subvert the constitution itself, and indeed believes that such an assertion … would be at odds with the principles that underlie the privilege,” he added.

Mr Meadows has also filed a separate lawsuit seeking to “to invalidate and prohibit the enforcement” of subpoenas against him and his private telecommunications service provider, and claiming the select committee is illegitimate because Ms Pelosi did not allow two of the Republican members offered by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — Reps Jim Banks and Jim Jordan — to serve on a committee before which they might be called as witnesses.

In an interview with CNN last week, Mr Thompson said he believed the lawsuit was no more than another stalling tactic by Mr Meadows, while another committee member, Rep Adam Schiff, said it struck him as “another fruitless effort to impede the work of the committee”.

If the full House of Representatives votes to approve the contempt citation against Mr Meadows, he would become the first ex-House member in nearly two centuries to face such a penalty from the body in which he once served.

Until Monday, the only ex-House member to incur a contempt sanction from his former colleagues was Sam Houston, the legendary Texas governor for whom the fourth most populous city in America was named. Houston, who served as a representative for Tennessee’s seventh district from 1823 to 1827, was found in contempt of the House in 1832 for assaulting Ohio representative William Stanberry after the House voted to use its inherent contempt powers to order the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms to detain Houston for a trial before the House body he had served in just five years earlier.

According to the Journal of the House of Representatives — a forerunner to today’s Congressional Record – the trial ended with then-Speaker Andrew Stevenson reading aloud a reprimand of Houston, who had by a vote of the House found guilty of “a violation of the rights and privileges of the House of Representatives, in having offered personal violence to one of its members for words spoken in debate”.

“Whatever the motives or causes may have been which led to the act of violence committed by you, your conduct has been pronounced by the solemn judgment of the House to be a high breach of their rights and privileges, and to demand their marked disapprobation and censure,” he said.