The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol voted unanimously late Monday to hold former White House chief of staff MarkMeadows in contempt over his refusal to answer questions and turn over documents as part of the inquiry.
If the panel's move is followed by the full House, it will vote to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on a charge of up to a year in prison.
The vote came a day after the House select committee released a report detailing the extent of Meadows' involvement in former President Donald Trump's ill-fated effort to overturn the 2020 election. The panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans made their case in a 51-page report for holding Meadows in contempt of the legislative body where he served from 2013 to 2020 as a Republican representative for a western North Carolina congressional district.
The chairman of the House committee said on Monday that the legacy he left in the House is now. His legacy is that he was accused of criminal prosecution because he wouldn't answer questions about the attack on our democracy.
The report said that the committee wanted to question Meadows about an email he sent on January 5 that advised that the National Guard was going to protect pro Trump people. The House panel wants to know if he had an exchange with an unnamed senator about rejecting the electors for Joe Biden.
In the report, the committee said that Meadows used a personal cell phone, two personal Gmail accounts, and a Signal account for official government business.
The House investigation into January 6 had been going on for a while. After giving the House panel more than 9000 pages of records, including thousands of text messages, he refused to sit for a deposition, citing Trump's assertion of executive privilege.
He told us to pound sand. Thompson said that he didn't show up.
He has no excuse to stonewall the investigation.
Liz Cheney read aloud a series of text messages in which Trump allies and Fox News hosts urged Meadows to convince Trump to publicly denounce the January 6 attack as it unfolded at the Capitol. The texts leave no doubt that the White House was aware of the extent of the violence, said Cheney, the committee's vice-chair and one of two Republicans on the House panel.
A judge was asked to block a subpoena issued to him by the House committee, as well as a separate subpoena to the phone company, after he sued Pelosi and other House lawmakers.
Ahead of the vote, the lawyer for the man asked the panel to allow the civil lawsuit to proceed in Washington, DC, federal trial court instead of holding the man in contempt. The lawyer said that the former top Trump advisor was trying to comply with his legal obligations.
Legal experts said that the lawsuit and past role as a close Trump advisor could make it difficult for the Justice Department to bring contempt charges against him. The House committee investigating January 6 referred charges against Steve Bannon to the Justice Department. But, unlike the other person, Bannon was not in government during the time in question.
The House committee voted to hold the former Justice Department official in contempt over his refusal to comply with their demands. Clark, who helped advance Trump's baseless claims of election fraud, was given a second chance to appear before the House committee, and he plans to assert his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. The full House was going to vote to hold him in contempt, but they decided not to because of Clark's appearance before the committee.
The House January 6 committee said that the book raised a number of additional questions. The book made his refusal to testify "untenable," the committee said.
The panel wrote that Mr. Meadows has shown his willingness to talk about issues related to the Select Committee's investigation across a variety of media platforms.
A three-judge appeals court panel rejected a bid by the former President to stop the National Archives from giving records to the House committee. The judge wrote that Trump had provided no basis for the court to reject Biden's decision to allow the release of those records.
Thompson said the court ruled quickly in the committee's favor.
He said that they are getting a clearer picture of who paid for it. "So I'm happy to report that we're making considerable progress, and before long, our findings will be out in the open."
