Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is finished talking to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Meadows' attorney, George Terwilliger III, notified the committee that the former senior Trump administration official could not accept their demands.
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Per Fox News:
โWe have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee,โ Terwilliger told Fox News.
Terwilliger said Meadows was looking to appear voluntarily before the committee and answer questions that Meadows believed were not protected by executive privilege.
Meadows is set to appear on โHannityโ Tuesday evening.
Here's that appearance:
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โOver the last several weeks, Mr. Meadows has consistently sought in good faith to pursue an accommodation with the Select Committee and up until yesterday we believed that could be obtained,โ Terwilliger said in a letter to committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. He noted that he and Meadows โconsistently communicatedโ that Meadows could not make โa unilateral decision to waive Executive Privilege claims asserted by the former president.โ
Meadows Responds First
In an interview Tuesday on Real America's Voice News, Meadows said he had โtried to reach an accommodation with the committeeโ to โshare non-privileged items.โ However, he said that the committee had โcontinued to pressโ forward, asking about his communications with Donald Trump, which the former president maintains are protected by executive privilege.
โIn addition,โ Meadows added, โwe found that in spite of our cooperation and sharing documents with [the committee]โ that they โissued a subpoena to a third party carrier trying to get informationโ about events leading up to the riot. At this point, Meadows feels it's best to โhonor the executive privilege and it looks like the courts are gonna have to weigh in on this.โ
The committee initially didn't respond publicly to Meadow's announcement. Everyone expected its members to threaten to vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, as Rep. Peter Aguilar (D-Calif.) later confirmed in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
WATCH:
The committee has previously voted to hold former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and former Senior Counsel to the President Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress.
At the same time, Meadows' lawyer suggested that he may still submit written answers to some of the committee's questions.
What would you do if you were Meadows? As always, share your thoughts with us.
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1 Comment
Speaking of Contempt of Congress, howโs Eric Holder doing since he was charged long ago?