House Votes To Hold Mark Meadows In Contempt Of Congress

The United States House of Representatives voted 222-208 to refer former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to the Department of Justice for contempt of Congress late Tuesday night for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.

Meadows, who served three terms as a Republican Congressman from North Carolina prior to joining ex-President Donald Trump‘s administration, is the first former lawmaker to face a contempt citation in almost 200 years.

Despite having provided thousands of documents to the Select Committee, including text messages and emails between himself and sitting members of Congress in which they discussed tactics to overturn the 2020 election, Meadows has declined to provide personal testimony about the buildup to the insurrection, claiming that he has the right to assert executive privilege.

But the trove of material that Meadows handed over to investigators on Capitol Hill contained a bounty of damning evidence that he had direct knowledge of and likely participated in attempts to obstruct Congress’s duties to certify President Joe Biden‘s victory in the Electoral College, which is a federal felony.

“Mr. Meadows participated in meetings and calls during which the participants reportedly discussed the need to ‘fight’ back against ‘mounting evidence’ of purported voter fraud after courts had considered and overwhelmingly rejected Trump campaign claims of voter fraud and other election irregularities,” a report released by the Committed on Saturday says.

“He participated in one such meeting in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump and Members of Congress, which he publicly tweeted about from his personal Twitter account shortly after. He participated in another such call just days before the January 6 attack with Mr. Trump, Members of Congress, attorneys for the Trump re-election campaign, and ‘some 300′ State and local officials to discuss the goal of overturning certain States’ electoral college results on January 6, 2021,” the report adds.

According to the report, Meadows wrote in an email on January 5 that “the National Guard would be present to ‘protect pro-Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” indicating that he had foreknowledge of the events of January 6.

Meadows “received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain States to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one Member of Congress acknowledged was ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows responded, ‘I love it,’” the report states.