The congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol is poised Monday to advocate that Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s White Home chief of employees, be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about his function in attempting to overturn Trump’s loss within the 2020 presidential election.
Meadows handed over 6,600 pages of data taken from private electronic mail accounts and about 2,000 textual content messages to the nine-member Home of Representatives committee investigating the violence by tons of of Trump supporters on the Capitol 11 months in the past. The difficulty occurred as lawmakers had been certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in his re-election bid.
Meadows initially agreed to testify about his function earlier than January 6 in attempting to assist Trump declare a second four-year time period within the White Home and his actions that day. Protesters, urged by Trump to “struggle like hell” to maintain him in workplace, stormed the Capitol, smashed home windows and scuffled with police. Final week, Meadows modified his thoughts about testifying, citing Trump’s assertion of government privilege to maintain paperwork secret to inhibit the investigation.
The committee, with seven Democrats and two Republican Trump critics, has already held one other former Trump aide, Steve Bannon, in contempt of Congress for his refusal to adjust to a subpoena to testify. Bannon was later indicted and, if convicted, might withstand a yr in jail.
The investigative panel late Sunday issued a 51-page report that confirmed Meadows was deeply concerned in attempting to maintain Trump in workplace although the previous president had misplaced 5 dozen courtroom challenges in varied states contesting his election loss and quite a few vote recounts in particular person political battleground states all upheld Biden’s victories.
State election officers usually mentioned there was no considerable voter fraud, as Trump has alleged to today, that will have modified the end result in his favor.
If Meadows had appeared for a deposition, the committee mentioned it will have questioned him about quite a few paperwork he supplied.
In a November 7, 2020 electronic mail, the committee mentioned that simply days after Trump misplaced the election, Meadows mentioned an effort to have state legislators in states Trump misplaced appoint electors supporting Trump quite than the pro-Biden electors a majority of voters had chosen.
In textual content messages with an unidentified senator, Meadows mentioned Trump’s misguided view that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the ability to overturn the Electoral Faculty vote depend as lawmakers formally licensed the state-by-state tally on January 6. Pence drew Trump’s ire as he refused to upend the Electoral Faculty vote, which Biden received by a 306-232 margin, the identical depend Trump received by in 2016.
A day earlier than the riot occurred, Meadows mentioned Nationwide Guard troops can be on the Capitol to “defend pro-Trump folks.” Different emails touched on the rioting on the Capitol because it unfolded, with pro-Trump supporters shutting down the Electoral Faculty vote depend for hours earlier than Biden was lastly declared the winner within the early hours of January 7.
The committee additionally mentioned it needs to ask Meadows about claims he made in his new guide, “The Chief’s Chief,” about his time within the White Home with Trump.
“Mr. Meadows has proven his willingness to speak about points associated to the Choose Committee’s investigation throughout a wide range of media platforms — anyplace, it appears, besides to the Choose Committee,” the panel wrote.
In flip, Meadows has sued the committee, asking a courtroom to invalidate two subpoenas that he says are “overly broad and unduly burdensome.”
The panel has interviewed practically 300 witnesses and lawmakers linked indirectly to the rioting or contesting of the election outcomes. The committee says it’s planning a sequence of hearings early subsequent yr to make public a lot of its findings.
A number of the greater than 600 folks charged within the rioting, usually recognized by boasts on social media accounts of being contained in the Capitol, have been sentenced to jail phrases of some months or, in additional severe circumstances, to greater than 4 years. However many of the felony expenses have but to be adjudicated.