With a unanimous 9-0 decision made on Monday, the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol recommended the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for prosecution for criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena, urged the DOJ to pursue criminal charges.
Panel’s contempt vote, highly unusual on Capitol Hill, is being seen as another warning sent to potential holdouts that non-compliance could lead to criminal charges.
Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger urged the panel not to pursue contempt charges against his client, arguing that he was under direct orders from former President Trump- who sought to keep his communications confidential under executive privilege- and that he already provided some 9,000 pages of documents to the panel before refusing to testify under subpoena.
Terwilliger also argued that this would harm the presidency as an institution by treading on the separation of powers, which could potentially make the future presidential advisers reluctant to offer the president full and honest advice on key decisions.
The committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, however, said Meadows has no credible excuse for stonewalling the Select Committee’s investigation and noted that they wanted to ask him about texts from lawmakers and Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade urging Trump to call off the mob.
The contempt vote was upstaged by new revelations that Trump’s eldest son Don Jr. and a trio of conservative Fox News superstars had all pleaded with Meadows during the Capitol attack to convince Trump to stop the Capitol violence and it seems that the leaders of the panel are to be homing in on the fact that Trump didn’t act upon those calls for more than three hours.
The next step in the process of holding Meadows in contempt of Congress will be taken by the House a vote in the Rules Committee on Tuesday morning followed by a vote by the full House on the measure that could come the same day.
Meadows is the latest Trump adviser to face the Jan. 6 committee’s legal ire after a federal grand jury charged in November former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon with two counts of contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for a deposition in front of the panel and refused to hand over requested documents.
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