Mark Meadows says the “narrative” of Jan. 6 doesn’t reconcile with the truth.
The former White House chief of staff, who defied a subpoena to appear Friday for a deposition with the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, rejected the argument that he and others resisting the panel’s demands in accordance with former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege show Trump is guilty in some way.
“I’ve told them that, to my knowledge, no one in the West Wing had any advance knowledge of what was going to happen on Jan. 6 in terms of the breach of security,” Meadows told Newsmax on Friday.
“Additionally, a number of things that took place actually would not go towards supporting that narrative,” he added.
Former Trump WH Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows, like Steve Bannon did, defied a subpoena from the Jan 6 House select committee, and he speaks out to @SchmittNYC.
“This is an attempt to really keep the focus on Jan 6 and not on their failing Biden administration policies.” pic.twitter.com/vugWrwv4iP
— Newsmax (@newsmax) November 13, 2021
Trump has argued information sought by the committee is protected by executive privilege, claims which Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican member of the Jan. 6 panel, said “appear to reveal” that Trump was “personally involved in the planning and execution” of the events on Jan. 6.
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In an order on Thursday, a federal appeals court granted a hold sought by Trump to block the National Archives from handing over documents to the Jan. 6 House committee starting on Friday. The order was a victory for Trump, who sued the House and the National Archives and claimed executive privilege over more than 700 records related to the Capitol riot.
President Joe Biden’s White House has declined to support Trump’s claims of executive privilege, and in a ruling on Monday, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
Oral arguments are set to take place at 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 30, something which Meadows will likely be watching very closely.
“Legal disputes are appropriately resolved by courts. It would be irresponsible for Mr. Meadows to prematurely resolve that dispute by voluntarily waiving privileges that are at the heart of those legal issues,” Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger, said in a statement.
Steve Bannon, another former Trump White House official and ally, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday for defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and its leaders signaled that Meadows could be next to face a contempt of Congress referral.
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“Mr. Meadows’s actions today — choosing to defy the law — will force the Select Committee to consider pursuing contempt or other proceedings to enforce the subpoena,” Chairman Bennie Thompson and Cheney said in a joint statement. “If his defiance persists and that process moves ahead, the record will reveal the wide range of matters the Select Committee wished to discuss with Mr. Meadows until his decision to hide behind the former President’s spurious claims of privilege.”
Meadows said he has his team worked “real hard to try to reach an accommodation with the committee, and yet it’s been basically their way or the highway, and so they took a very aggressive move today.”
After claiming people see the investigation as an attempt to distract from the Biden administration’s failings, Meadows, himself a former member of Congress, said the committee “is more interested in politics than they are really solving real problems.”
