Some dangerously crazy notions floated around the Trump White House a year ago, and its chief of staff, Mark Meadows, should testify about them. However, some of the substance of Meadows’s actions was not necessarily sinister.

A House panel is set to vote Monday evening to recommend to the full House to hold Meadows in “contempt of Congress” (a potential criminal charge) for withholding some documents and direct testimony from its investigation into the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot. The panel has a point: Meadows’s assertion that he is protecting former President Donald Trump’s “executive privilege” claims are almost entirely spurious legally while also morally obtuse.