Key Witness Mark Meadows Is Flailing and Desperate Because of Newly Surfaced Receipts.

Photo by Patrick Semansky / AP

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is having a very bad week. After initially agreeing to cooperate with the January 6 Committee—and having already turned over some 6,000 non-privileged documents—Meadows had an abrupt change of heart right before he was set to be deposed under oath. He is now refusing to cooperate further with the Committee and instead went on the offensive, filing a lawsuit against Nancy Pelosi, the Committee, and its members in which he is asking a court to intervene to stop the subpoena. He also filed a suit against Verizon demanding that they not comply with a request to turn over metadata on his phone records, ironically raising even further interest in what that metadata would reveal.

Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe opined that “Meadows has no conceivable basis for this frivolous lawsuit” and that its “obvious motive is to try getting Trump back on his good side after outraging the president with his tell-all book.” Rep. Liz Cheney noted the curious position Meadows’ had adopted by refusing to answer questions about documents he already had voluntarily turned over. And Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff argued that Meadows had waived his right to refuse to testify by publishing a book in which he discussed the election and the attack. “Why he can discuss Jan 6 in a book, but not with Congress, is inexplicable,” Schiff said.

The Committee’s response to the lawsuit was quick and forceful. “Meadows’s flawed lawsuit won’t succeed at slowing down the Select Committee’s investigation or stopping us from getting info we’re seeking,” the Committee stated. “The Committee will meet next week to advance a report recommending that the House cite Meadows for contempt and refer him for prosecution.” With respect to Meadows’ lawsuit alleging, without solid legal basis, that the Committee lacks lawful authority to obtain the evidence it seeks from him, Rep. Cheney quipped, “We look forward to litigating that.” 

Meadows likely has reason to be concerned about his own legal risk. Last week it was reported that as chief of staff Meadows had pressed federal agencies to investigate baseless election fraud claims being advanced by conspiracy theorists Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn. Meadows himself also passed along debunked YouTube election fraud videos to the Justice Department and tried to enlist the Department to overturn the election, as documented by a recent Senate investigation. 

After Meadows turned over documents from his personal email and personal cell phone to the Committee, even more questions came to light. As the Committee noted in a prepared statement, it 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.” The communications reportedly include a text exchange from November 6, 2020 between Meadows and an unnamed member of Congress about appointing alternate slates of electors in certain states, a plan the member acknowledged was “highly controversial” but to which Meadows responded, in Don, Jr.-esque fashion, “I love it.” Another Meadows email dated January 5, 2021, the day before the attack on the Capitol, had attached a 38-page PowerPoint entitled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” that was to go to people “on the hill.” A separate email from that same day discussed having the National Guard on standby.

With so much evidence piling up around him—which increasingly points to an illegal conspiracy among the White House and certain members of Congress to overturn the election, a crime that could carry as much as a 10-year sentence—Meadows is now caught in a trap of his own making. He basically acknowledged this in his new civil lawsuit, stating that he is now in an untenable position of having to either defy the Committee’s subpoena and risk criminal prosecution or defy his former boss Donald Trump’s attempt to assert executive privilege in order to block the subpoena.

The Committee doesn’t seem moved by Meadows’ plight, and it indicated that efforts to delay and withhold evidence from it were unlikely to succeed. It warned, “The Select Committee has gotten information from more than 275 witnesses with more interviews scheduled. For the outliers trying to stonewall our investigation: you will face consequences. We will not allow anyone to stand in the way of our mission.”