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Ex-Trump Aide Mark Meadows Cooperating with House Jan. 6 Panel

(WASHINGTON) — Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, is cooperating with a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and providing some documents, putting off for now the panel’s threat to hold him in contempt, the committee’s chairman said Tuesday.

But the panel “will continue to assess his degree of compliance,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a statement.

After two months of negotiations, Meadows and committee reached an agreement. This also comes after Steve Bannon was indicted by the Justice Department for defying subpoenas.

Thompson claimed Meadows had produced records and will shortly appear at an initial deposition.

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“The Select Committee expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive,” Thompson said.

Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger, said he was continuing to work with the committee and its staff on a “potential accommodation” that would not require Meadows to waive executive privilege nor “forfeit the long-standing position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress,” as Trump has argued.

“We appreciate the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics,” Terwilliger said in a statement.

The tentative agreement with Meadows highlights the committee’s efforts to balance its need for information about Trump’s role in the violent insurrection with the former president’s assertions — including in an ongoing court case — that Congress cannot obtain information about his private conversations with top aides at the time.

While the committee has rejected Trump’s arguments and President Joe Biden has waived the privilege as the current executive, the panel wants to move quickly and avoid lengthy legal entanglements, if possible, that could delay the investigation.

Terwilliger had previously made clear that Meadows wouldn’t comply with the panel’s September subpoena because of Trump’s executive privilege claims. The committee rejected those arguments, especially after the White House said that Biden would waive any privilege over Meadows’ interview and as courts shot down Trump’s efforts to stop the committee from gathering information.

The House panel argued that it has questions for Meadows that do not directly involve conversations with Trump and couldn’t be blocked by privilege claims.

In the committee’s subpoena, Thompson cited Meadows’ efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat and his pressure on state officials to push the former president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

A vote has been scheduled for Wednesday by the committee to file contempt allegations against Jeffrey Clark (ex-Justice Department official), who had declined to answer questions after appearing for deposition.

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