Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned several documents in his office fireplace roughly a dozen times in the final weeks of the Trump administration, according to newly released testimony published by the Jan. 6 committee.
During the final month of Trump’s term in office, Meadows was seen putting documents into his fireplace once or twice a week throughout December 2020, according to testimony from then-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. It’s not clear what documents were burned in the fireplace, but the incidents typically occurred after Meadows came out of meetings with other officials, she said.
“Roughly a dozen times I remember seeing him, and it was when we would have the General Services Administration staff come light it first thing in the morning, and then they had logs next to his fireplace and his closet, too,” Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee. “Throughout the day, he would put more logs on the fireplace to keep it burning throughout the day. And I recall roughly a dozen times where he would take the [fireplace cover] off and then throw a few more pieces of paper in with it when he put more logs on the fireplace.”
Here’s what Hutchinson said abotu Meadows burning papers in his WH fireplace — including 2-4 times after meeting with Rep. Perry.
We wrote about this testimony in May: https://t.co/HXaLJ9Fv4z pic.twitter.com/KQbOXZ8pWA
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 27, 2022
The White House has specific policies for burning documents rather than throwing materials into trash cans, Hutchinson said. All documents that staffers wish to discard must be placed into burn bags that are then classified based on their contents.
“It’s standing protocol, I believe, for previous and future administrations, too, for record-keeping purposes,” Hutchinson testified. “The Presidential Records Act only asks that you keep the original copy of a document. … However, I don’t know if [the documents Meadows burned] were the first or original copies of anything. It’s entirely possible that he had put things in his fireplace that he also would have put into a burn bag that there were duplicates of or that there was an electronic copy of.”
Hutchinson recalled one specific instance in which Meadows burned documents after a meeting with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) about the vice president’s role in the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. Beginning in December 2020, Perry began meeting with Meadows to discuss “what he believed could happen on Jan. 6,” Hutchinson testified.
During these meetings, Perry would bring physical papers to the White House and the pair would prepare various PowerPoint presentations, according to Hutchinson.
“I remember one time, his door was propped open. He put a few things in the fireplace,” Hutchinson said. “And there were a few people in the office with him, but I don’t remember who else was. Mr. Perry brought a few other people to meet him.”
At the time, Perry was “directly involved” with efforts to appoint Jeffrey Clark as the attorney general in order to back now-former President Donald Trump’s claims the 2020 election was influenced by widespread voter fraud, according to the Jan. 6 committee.
Hutchinson’s testimony was released on Tuesday as part of the committee’s latest evidence dump detailing its investigation into the Capitol riot.
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The committee’s full report exceeds 800 pages, including four appendices that focus on security at the Capitol, the National Guard’s slow deployment, how foreign adversaries used Trump’s election claims to their advantage, and the financial backing of the “Stop the Steal” rally that devolved into the riot. The panel also voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.
Overall, the report seeks to prove Trump is liable for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters tried to halt Congress from certifying the electoral vote counting that formalized Joe Biden’s election as president.
