Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows responded Wednesday to an announcement from the two leaders of the Congressional Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot that the panel will continue to pursue contempt of Congress charges against him, even in light of a civil suit filed against the committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In a statement, the Committee’s Democratic chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, and the Republican ranking member, Wyoming Rep. Elizabeth Cheney, said Meadows’ lawsuit won’t change their plans.
“Mr. Meadows’s flawed lawsuit won’t succeed at slowing down the Select Committee’s investigation or stopping us from getting the information we’re seeking,” Thompson and Cheney said. “The Select Committee will meet next week to advance a report recommending that the House cite Mr. Meadows for contempt of Congress and refer him to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
On “The Ingraham Angle“, host Laura Ingraham reported Meadows’ suit calls on the courts to block “two overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas from the committee issued in whole or part without legal authority and in violation of the Constitution.”
FILE PHOTO: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaking to reporters in 2020. REUTERS/Al Drago/File Picture/File Photo
(REUTERS/Al Drago/File Picture/File Photo)
Meadows said that one of the subpoenas is against his telecommunications provider and is so overbroad, he could not determine a legislative reason for it.
“I can tell you they did this without notifying us. We came to the conclusion that they’re still going to try to question those personal private conversations that I had with the President of the United States and other senior officials in the West Wing. And quite frankly, their scope is, of course, going to have to do. So we’re going to challenge it,” said Meadows, formerly a Republican congressman from North Carolina.
“I can tell you, because certain non-privileged communications, I think what they will find is that no one in the White House had any advance knowledge of anything that was going to happen on that [January 6] in terms of a breach of security,” he added.
“I can also tell you that… President Trump not only authorized but encouraged the authorization of 10,000 National Guard leading up to that. That’s not something that you do if you’re anticipating, you know, some kind of nefarious motive.”
“[T]hey are doing a fishing expedition,” he said of the committee. “It’s broadly believed that they’ve issued more subpoenas in the last two months than they have in the last decade.”
He said that Pelosi and Thompson are breaking recent precedent in that House Speakers of both parties have been otherwise “very judicious” in the serving of subpoenas, until now.
Ingraham later remarked that instead of Meadows’ communications, she and many Americans would like to see Pelosi’s communications with New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer from that day.