By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House voted 222 to 208 to recommend holding Mark Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress Tuesday night after the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted unanimously on Monday to hold the former White House Chief of Staff and member of Congress in contempt for refusing to cooperate in the inquiry.

If charged by the U.S. Department of Justice and found guilty, Meadows could land in prison for up to a year and face a fine of up to $100,000.

Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, called it “jarring” that Meadows would stop cooperating since he served in Congress for more than seven years from North Carolina.

“It’s not hard to locate records of his time in the House and find a Mr. Meadows full of indignation because, at the time, a prior administration wasn’t cooperating with a congressional investigation to his satisfaction,” Thompson said. “He has no credible excuse for stonewalling the Select Committee’s investigation.”

About 300 witnesses have testified before the committee, Thompson indicated, and the committee staff has gathered more than 30,000 documents, including text messages to and from Meadows during the insurrection on Jan. 6.

“A small group of people have gotten a lot of attention because of their defiance,” Thompson said. “But many others have taken a different path and provided important information about January 6 and the context in which the riot occurred.”

Meadows was called to appear for depositions before the committee, and indicated he would cooperate, then did an about face and declined in spite of a House subpoena, citing former president Donald Trump’s insistence that he not cooperate based on dubious claims of executive privilege.

In its report recommending the contempt charge, the Select Committee indicated Meadows stated in an email message ahead of the insurrection that the National Guard would “protect pro-Trump people,” according to reporting by Reuters.

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, said the committee wanted Meadows to testify about “dozens of texts” he was sent during the Capitol attack, including texts from Donald Trump Jr. saying his father should tell his supporters to stop the attack and go home.

“We cannot surrender to President Trump’s efforts to hide what happened,” Cheney said.

Committee members also said they wanted to ask Meadows about his text messages from unnamed members of Congress discussing ways to avoid certifying the election results.

In the ongoing effort to defy the committee and obscure the truth of what happened, Meadows has sued the committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. George Terwilliger, his lawyer, sent a letter on Monday asking the committee to reconsider its plan to vote for the contempt charge, arguing that it would be “illegal” for the panel to refer the matter for a House vote.

Thompson discounted that argument, noting that Meadows published and is promoting a book that goes into detail about events under investigation.

Meadows could become the third associate of the former Republican president to face a criminal contempt of Congress charge. The Justice Department, at the House’s request, has already brought similar charges against Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. The House is also considering similar action against former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

Meadows played a far more substantial role in plans to try to overturn the 2020 election than was previously known, and he was involved in failed efforts to get Trump to order the mob invading the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stand down, investigators for the House committee scrutinizing the attack have learned, according to reporting from The New York Times.

Meadows turned over a trove of about 9,000 documents before halting his cooperation with the committee, revealing more about the extent of his involvement in Trump’s attempts to use the federal government to invalidate the 2020 election results.

Before the committee vote, Cheney — the daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney — added to the evidence implicating Meadows. She read aloud text messages sent to him by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and by the Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade — all urging Trump to speak out against the mob violence.

“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP,” Don Jr. texted Meadows.

“I’m pushing it hard,” Meadows responded. “I agree.”

In another message, Don Jr. implored Meadows: “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”

Ingraham sent her own plea for it to stop as well.

“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” she wrote to Meadows. “He is destroying his legacy.”

Cheney also quoted panicked text messages from unnamed people who were in the building, including one who told Meadows, “We are under siege up here at the Capitol.”

“These text messages leave no doubt,” Cheney said. “The White House knew exactly what was happening here at the Capitol.”

The committee found that Meadows, who led the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, essentially served as Trump’s right-hand man in he effort to undermine the 2020 election. Meadows encouraged members of Congress to object to Joe Biden’s victory, and he pursued baseless allegations of voter fraud in several states.

Meadows personally coordinated with rally planners who brought throngs of Trump supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the president’s election loss, and Meadows said he would line up the National Guard to protect them, according to documents he provided to the committee.

At one point, an organizer of the rally turned to Meadows for help, telling him that things “have gotten crazy and I desperately need some direction. Please.”

It’s not clear how he responded, according to The Times. The exchanges suggest that Meadows — who at times expressed personal skepticism about the claims of election fraud and theft pushed by Trump and his allies — catered to Trump by seeking evidence to support the president’s allegations. He was in contact with “a broad collection of obscure characters whose sometimes zany plans and theories made their way into the White House at a critical time.”

“It comes down to this: Mr. Meadows started by doing the right thing — cooperating,” Thompson said. “When it was time for him to follow the law, come in and testify on those questions, he changed his mind and told us to pound sand. He didn’t even show up.”

Before he stopped cooperating, Meadows turned over documents that he said were not privileged, but which shed considerable light on his activities in the wake of Trump’s election defeat.

As supporters of Trump strategized about ways to keep him in power, Meadows encouraged and guided members of Congress on steps they could take to try to overturn the election, the documents show.

“Yes,” he wrote in one message about appointing a slate of pro-Trump electors and refusing to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. “Have a team on it.”

When Trump needed someone to inspect an audit of the vote counting in Georgia or to encourage an investigation into the election in Arizona, he dispatched Meadows, who dutifully tried to carry out the president’s plans to try to undermine the election.

Meadows’s refusal to sit for an interview with the committee comes as he is promoting his new book The Chief’s Chief on radio and television. The book contains details of White House conversations and interactions with the president.

“Mr. Meadows has shown his willingness to talk about issues related to the select committee’s investigation across a variety of media platforms — anywhere, it seems, except to the select committee,” the panel wrote in a report released Sunday night.

The panel said it also had questions about Meadows’s use of a personal cellphone, a Signal account and two personal Gmail accounts for government business, and whether he had properly turned over records from those accounts to the National Archives.

The emails that Meadows provided to the committee showed that he discussed encouraging state legislators to appoint slates of pro-Trump electors instead of the Biden electors chosen by the voters. They also show that he encouraged Justice Department investigations of unfounded claims of voter fraud, and that he promised the National Guard would be present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to “protect pro-Trump people,” clear evidence of an “inside job” as we reported back in January.

The committee is also scrutinizing a 38-page PowerPoint document containing plans to overturn Biden’s victory. That document, which Meadows provided to the committee, included a call for Trump to declare a national emergency, and it promoted an unsupported claim that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states.

Meadows’s attorney claimed he had nothing to do with the document.

Bannon’s contempt trial is scheduled for next summer, and if the House votes to send the contempt charge against Meadows to the Justice Department, he could join him on trial.

Members of the committee assailed Meadows for refusing to share what he knew about what unfolded on Jan. 6. They said the text messages he provided made it clear that he could shed light on what Trump was doing and saying at critical times that day.

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