Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows abruptly withdrew his cooperation with the January 6th House Select Committee on Tuesday, after working with the committee and providing evidence. Meadows had already shared some of the texts between himself and other members of Trump’s inner circle in or around January 6th. The messages were from Meadows’ personal cell phone, which doesn’t appear to have been turned over to the National Archives, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
According to a letter from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, the conversations involve the Trump administration’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Committee’s Chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), revealed that Meadows had a conversation with one Republican member of Congress who suggested an alternative slate of electors. The member confessed that the idea would be a “highly controversial” one, but Meadows still said, “I love it.”
[Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images]In one section of the letter sent to Meadows via his lawyer, Rep. Thompson writes, “The text messages you did produce include a Nov. 6, 2020, text exchange with a Member of Congress apparently about appointing alternate electors in certain states as part of a plan that the Member acknowledged would be ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows apparently said, ‘I love it’; an early Jan. 2021 text message exchange between Mr. Meadows and an organizer of the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse’ and text messages about the need for the former President to issue a public statement that could have stopped the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” an excerpt of the letter from Thompson to Meadows’ lawyer says.
— Tara Dublin (Taylor's Version) (@taradublinrocks) December 8, 2021
The letter goes on to say that Meadows held back over 1,000 text messages from his cell phone that he handed over to his cell phone provider after January 6, 2021.
I bet Mark Meadows discovered that based on the questions they intended to ask that the January 6th committee knew a hell of lot more than he anticipated and have RECEIPTS. He is SHOOK.
Meadows did hand over a 38-page PowerPoint presentation titled “Options for 6 JAN.” At the same time, the Committee also discovered “certain text messages from his personal cellphone he relinquished after Jan. 6.” Despite his brief time cooperating, the Committee still plans to move forward with filing Contempt of Congress charges against him, as they did with his former colleague, Steve Bannon.
The Select Committee has numerous questions for Mr. Meadows about records he has turned over to the Committee with no claim of privilege, which include real-time communications with many individuals as the events of January 6th unfolded.
If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.
