As the committee investigating January’s Capitol riots prepares to recommend contempt charges against former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Monday, the committee released a 51-page report outlining their reasoning Sunday night. The report details the questions the committee has about the documents Meadows has already provided. This includes 6,600 pages of records taken from personal email accounts and about 2,000 text messages.
“According to documents and testimony obtained by the Select Committee, Mark Randall Meadows is uniquely situated to provide critical information about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as well as efforts taken by public officials and private individuals to spread the message of widespread fraud in the November 2020 election and to delay or prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” the committee wrote in its report. “Mr. Meadows’s relevant documents and testimony are necessary to the Select Committee’s investigation for many additional reasons.”
The committee wrote in its report that the documents in question include an email from Meadows on Jan. 5 saying the national guard was on standby to “protect pro Trump people” on Jan. 6. The report also reveals text messages Meadows sent to a Senator about the vice president’s power to reject electors.
“Mr. Meadows reportedly sent an email—subject line ‘Constitutional Analysis of the Vice President’s Authority for January 6, 2021, Vote Count’—to a member of then-Vice President Pence’s senior staff containing a memo written by an attorney affiliated with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign,” the committee wrote in the report. “The memo argued that the Vice President could declare electoral votes in six States in dispute when they came up for a vote during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.”
The committee is expected to recommend contempt charges against Meadows Monday. Last week, committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said the committee had “no choice” but to do so after Meadows discontinued his cooperation with the committee. Meadows responded by filing a lawsuit against the committee, each member of the committee, and House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“We’ve always been as a good citizen willing to cooperate in terms of non-privileged information. President Trump made it very clear that he was claiming executive privilege, and we honored that,” Meadows said over the weekend. “What we found was not only were they still going to ask questions, and try to delve into those things that are protected by executive privilege, but then we also found, unbeknownst to us, a subpoena that was sent to my cell phone carrier that was so broad in scope, that it defies logic on how it could have any legislative intent.”
If the committee recommends contempt charges against Meadows, the full House is expected to vote on the charges Tuesday.
