WATCH: Rep. Ed Perlmutter Says Mark Meadows Will Plead The 5th To Avoid Treason Charges

During a House Rules Committee meeting, Representatives discussed the decision to refer Mark Meadows to the Justice Department for a charge of criminal contempt after the former Chief of Staff for the Trump White House quit cooperating with the Select Committee set up to investigate the attack on Congress.

The Committee has voted to hold Meadows in contempt after he refused to cooperate with the investigation, claiming that Congress wasn’t showing sufficient respect for executive privilege. However, as the House Rules Committee discussed this in a December 14th meeting, Representative Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) brought up a word that has largely been avoided so far: treason.

The full meeting can be viewed live below, with Permutter’s comments just over an hour and a half into the session.

“I think what we’re gonna get next from Mr. Meadows is probably something…about the desire to take the Fifth Amendment, because…treason is defined, going back to the dictionary, treason is the crime of attacking state authority to which one owes allegiance.”

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He goes on to assert that “there is a pledge of allegiance to Donald Trump above and beyond the Constitution,” and that the memos that have been disclosed in the documents Meadows turned over before he ceased cooperation with Congress are, in his view, sufficient to show treason.

“We’ve danced around this a lot. We’ve talked about obstructing Congress, things like that. But this was an effort to have a coup. To overthrow the country, to break the pledge of allegiance we make to this country and the Constitution.”