January 6 committee renews push for Mark Meadows’ phone logs and testimony
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice
The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has renewed its effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before Congress about the attack on the US Capitol and to obtain his phone logs, according to attorneys for Meadows.
Lawyers for Meadows wrote to a federal court on Wednesday asking for emergency help to hold off the subpoenas. Judge Carl Nichols earlier this week dismissed a lawsuit that Meadows had brought against the select committee last year, where he challenged their subpoenas.
One of Meadows’ lawyers, John Moran, explained that after the lawsuit’s dismissal, the select committee reached out to Verizon on Tuesday for Meadow’s personal call and text records. Counsel for the select committee then spoke to Meadows’ team in a conference call on Wednesday, saying they also still want to depose him.
“Verizon Wireless further informed me that the Select Committee was seeking their immediate compliance with the subpoena issued” almost a year ago, Moran wrote in a declaration.
Moran added that the committee’s “counsel informed us that they intend to pursue potential avenues for securing Mr. Meadows’s appearance for a deposition, which was the subject of the Select Committee’s September 23, 2021 subpoena.”
Meadows’ team is trying to buy time with its new filing, asking Nichols to reconsider his ruling, and for him to put a pause on the subpoenas while the lawyers put together more arguments and the judge considers them.
Nichols dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds without weighing Meadows’ claims, including around executive privilege protections and about the committee’s powers.
“He seeks reconsideration and a temporary stay at this early juncture because, in the immediate aftermath of the Court’s order, the Congressional Defendants have already begun efforts to enforce the subpoenas. If successful, those efforts would moot some or all of Mr. Meadows’s claims before he could exercise his right to seek reconsideration and, if necessary and appropriate, to pursue any appeal,” Meadows’ lawyers wrote in their latest filing. “The legal issues presented by this case are, as the Court has acknowledged, unique.”
The House subpoenaed Meadows for documents and testimony in September of last year, and he handed over more than 2,000 text messages he sent and received between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration. The text messages, which have since been obtained by CNN, reveal how top Republican Party officials, right-wing figures and even Donald Trump’s family members discussed with him what the then-president should say and do after the election and even in the middle of the insurrection.
Meadows did not turn over other documents he had, and the House committee voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress for it and for his refusal to testify, referring the matter to the Justice Department. He has not been charged with a crime.
While the contempt proceeding bubbled up late last year, Meadows went to court, suing the committee. Citing the possibility that information around the ex-president may be privileged, Meadows has told the court he cannot testify and provide phone records.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
