January 6 Committee: Contempt for Meadows Next Big Kahuna Donald J. Trump

 

Mark is the best Chief of Staff ever

Always followed my orders

(Now: Duck, dodge, distort, deflect, deny)

Define political insanity & Trump's insanity: “Preach to the base that the 2020 election was rigged; that Joe Biden lost; that I won; and Biden is in office illegally.” 

Then raise millions to continue the con based on a maybe promise to run again in 2024, or maybe we can have a January 6 repeat next time with our guns and lots of other stuff.

Mark Meadows is January 6 co-conspirator with Trump:

Meadows is Trump’s former CofS (and probably a few others very close to Trump down the line) will be named later I am sure. All of them are off the charts in the rational, logical, and legal categories.

This update refers to Meadows and his refusal to comply with the House Select Committee subpoena looking into the January 6 insurrection. His refusal to comply came after for Trump advisor, Steven Bannon, was charged with two criminal felonies by a Grand Jury for the same arrogance.

This update is on Meadows and maybe others will follow it:

“House Votes to Recommend Contempt Charge Against Meadows”

The former Trump White House chief of staff previously provided the committee with thousands of pages of documents, including text messages he received on January 6, then he simply said no more – not testimony.

Now this (December 14) late evening vote result against him:

The House voted 222 to 208 (member votes seen here) to recommend that Meadows be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with its committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Committee Vice-Chair said: “It’s increasingly clear that for 187 minutes, the commander in chief was derelict of his duty. We know this because Mr. Meadows provided the evidence to the committee without any assertation of privilege. And while the records he’s handed over are helpful, there are many questions that we need to ask him. President Trump is hiding behind executive privilege. All of my colleagues, all of them, knew that what happened on Jan. 6 was an assault on our Constitution. They knew it at the time. Yet now they are defending the indefensible. Whether we tell the truth, get to the truth and defend ourselves against it ever happening again is the moral test of our time.”

House Speaker announcement following the final vote: “The yeas are 222 and the nays are 208. The resolution is adopted without objection. The motion to reconsider is laid on the table.”

Meadows is now the first former member of Congress to be held in contempt of the body he once served in.

Two Republicans — Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who also serve on the committee investigating the attack over the objections of their party — joined all the Democrats in voting to find Meadows him in contempt.

But while the action indicated a stalemate between Mr. Meadows and Congress, his initial cooperation with the inquiry — including around 9,000 pages of documents he turned over — has already given the committee its first substantial burst of momentum and political traction as it tries to establish a full accounting of the events that led to the deadly riot.

More revelations emerged on Tuesday before the final vote, as Ms. Cheney, read aloud text messages that Republicans in Congress sent to Meadows on January 6 as violence engulfed the Capitol.

·  One said: “It’s really bad up here on the hill.”

·  Another implored: “The President needs to stop this ASAP.”

·  Still another said: “Fix this now.”

The committee also divulged a November 4 message from an unidentified Republican member of Congress to Meadows — before states were even finished counting ballots — proposing: “An aggressive strategy in which Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states would just send their own electors instead of potential Biden electors chosen by voters.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and a member of the Select committee asked: “How did this text influence the planning of Mark Meadows and Donald Trump to try to destroy the lawful Electoral College majority that had been established by the people of the United States and the states for Joe Biden?”

Cheney’s recitation of the messages from Republicans, during a meeting of the Rules Committee before the House began debating the contempt charge, was a stark reminder that there was a moment when prominent conservative figures, GOP lawmakers, and even Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. had all been appalled by the violence at the Capitol and agreed it was the president who needed to stop it.

Cheney, who was ousted from her #3 Republican leadership post for speaking out against Trump’s election lies, said: “As the violence was underway on the 6th, it was evident to all, but we know that for 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act. And he refused to act when his action was required, it was essential, and it was compelled by his duty, compelled by his oath of office.”

What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.

Timeline of January 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. 

Here’s how:

Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.

Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.

Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans, and images during the violence really mean?

The revelations were also being watched in the Senate, where GOP Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that while he was not among the lawmakers sending text messages to Meadows on January 6, he was paying close attention to what House investigators might uncover, telling Senate reporters: “We’re all watching, as you are, what’s unfolding on the House side, and it will be interesting to reveal all the participants that were involved.”

After initially expressing outrage at what unfolded on January 6, Republicans in Congress have largely pivoted to denying or dismissing what happened and rallied once again around Trump, arguing he was not culpable. House leaders sent out a notice on Tuesday encouraging their members to fight the contempt charge against Meadows.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said the committee’s investigation was a political “charade focused solely on persecuting Mr. Trump and his allies.” Jordan added: “Mark Meadows is our former colleague. He is a good man. He is my friend. This is as wrong as it gets. You all know it. But your lust for power, your lust to get your opponents, is so intense you don’t care.”

The vote would be the second time in recent weeks the House voted to hold an ally of Trump in contempt of Congress for refusing to sit for deposition. Steve Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury last month after the House voted to recommend that he be found in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the committee. He goes on trial in July.

Unlike Bannon, who was not a member of the government during the run-up to January 6, Meadows was one of Trump’s closest White House advisers during the attack.

There may be stronger case against cooperating with a congressional inquiry that seeks confidential communications with a president that could be protected by executive privilege.

Democrats argue that Meadows’s decision to furnish thousands of documents that are not privileged only underscored his obligation to speak to investigators about what he knew. They chalked up his change in stance to pressure from the former president, who objected to portions in Meadows’s newly released book.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is the Select Committee Chairman and he said: “In an investigation like ours, when you produce records, you are expected to come in and answer questions about those records. But that’s not what he did. He told us the day before his deposition — the same day his book was published — that he would no longer cooperate with our investigation, and that he wasn’t coming in to be interviewed.”

Meadows and his lawyer, George Terwilliger, vigorously protested the charges before the House vote with Terwilliger saying: “Mr. Meadows never stopped cooperating with the committee. He has cooperated as much as he could without violating President Trump’s assertions of executive privilege.”

Ironically, Meadows has filed suit against Speaker Pelosi and the Committee seeking a court ruling to determine the validity of Trump’s assertions of executive privilege. On Monday (December 13), the full committee voted 9 to 0 to recommend that Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress.

Meadows said later in an interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity that the vote against him was: “Disappointing but not surprising.” He then argued that the committee was focusing solely on Trump at the expense of security lapses at the Capitol. I’ve tried to share non-privileged information. But truly the executive privilege that Donald Trump has claimed is his to waive. It’s not mine to waive.”

The documents Meadows furnished have shown that he played a far more substantial role in plans to try to overturn the 2020 election than was previously known.

Among the documents Meadows provided the committee was a message in which he indicated the National Guard: “Would be available to protect pro-Trump people on January 6.” 

Meadows went on to tell Hannity the former president wanted thousands of troops ready. But the guard was not deployed quickly on January 6 as the violence unfolded.

The former Guard Commanding Officer testified that he had to wait for more than three hours for approval to send in his troops.

In an effort to speed up guard deployment, the House approved a bill to empower the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police to unilaterally request the assistance of the D.C. National Guard or other federal law enforcement agencies in emergencies without prior approval of the Capitol Police Board (CPB). The measure had passed the Senate on and now sits President Biden’s desk for his signature.

The Meadows debate on the House floor was extraordinary and at times bitter. At one point, the proceedings ground to a halt after Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) demanded that Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the #2 Democrat in the House, be sanctioned for saying that Perry did not want the subpoena of Meadows enforced because he feared the truth that would be exposed.

Perry, BTW is the new leader of the right-wing “House Freedom Caucus.” They played a key role in the weeks before January 6 in trying to help Trump invalidate the election results, introducing a little-known DOJ lawyer to Trump as he pushed the agency to declare the 2020 election fraudulent.

Perry’s complaint against Hoyer was rejected. But the exchange reflected the hostile dynamic in the House.

The exact same place where lawmakers came under attack by a mob inspired by Trump’s lies of a stolen election were squaring off against Republicans who helped spread those very lies.

Aides said the Meadows final vote would be the first time the House had voted to hold one of its former members in criminal contempt since Sam Houston, a former Democratic Representative from Tennessee, was convicted of the charge in the 1830's after beating a member of Congress with his wooden cane.

My 2 Cents: Rather long yet detailed important post filled with facts.

I totally support the work this far of the House Select committee looking into the January 6 Capitol rioting. Now we see that Mark Meadows was a key player doing what CofS do: Follow the orders the President – in this he followed the plan that Trump approved and put in place – that is as clear as day.

Donald J. Trump – is the big fish next in line to go down and hopefully both he and Meadows will go down with some serious jail time. Surely, they earned it.

Thanks for stopping by.