With each passing week, it seems as though the January 6th select committee is growing more agitated.
This escalation of turbulence is almost certainly due to the group feeling the heat on the back of their necks, as a red wave threatens to blow them right out of Congress come next year’s midterm elections.
And so, in an effort to foment swift cooperation, they are now throwing criminal contempt charges all over the place, first for former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and now for The Don’s former Chief of Staff.
Mark Meadows’s cooperation with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection appears to be over as quickly as it started.
Just one week after the committee announced it had reached an agreement with Donald Trump’s former chief of staff to produce records and appear for an initial deposition, Fox News reported Tuesday morning that Meadows and his attorney were planning to notify lawmakers on the House panel that they could not reach an understanding on how to work together.
The group was quick to suggest that Meadows would face a similar fate.
Meadows was scheduled to appear before the select committee on Wednesday. In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., warned that they will go forward with the deposition as planned.
“If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution,” they said.
“Even as we litigate privilege issues, the Select Committee has numerous questions for Mr. Meadows about records he has turned over to the Committee with no claim of privilege, which include real-time communications with many individuals as the events of January 6th unfolded,” read the statement from Thompson and Cheney. “We also need to hear from him about voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts, which were required to be turned over to the National Archives in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.”
And while some Democrats have cheered these moves as direct and forceful, others have had the wherewithal to recognize them for what they truly represent: Desperation and agitation.
