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Donald Trump is probably freaking out right now after CNN just reported that Mark Meadows is officially cooperating with the House select committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
Related: Shocker: Trump’s potential new chief of staff is vehemently anti-LGBTQ
Trump’s homophobic former chief of staff has begun providing records and has agreed to appear before the committee for an initial interview. His cooperation marks a “critical shift” in the investigation. It also staves off a criminal contempt referral… for now.
How many calls from Mar-a- Lago do you think Mark Meadows got in the past few hours?
— Chris Hahn (@ChristopherHahn) November 30, 2021
“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney,” Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the committee, said in a statement released earlier today. “He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition.”
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“The Select Committee expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive. The Committee will continue to assess his degree of compliance with our subpoena after the deposition.”
Related: Ivanka hosted a fancy dinner party the night after January 6 because of course she did
As for Meadows, his attorney says his client understands what is expected of him and is open to discussing certain topics, provided they don’t fall under executive privilege.
“As we have from the beginning, we continue to work with the Select Committee and its staff to see if we can reach an accommodation that does not require Mr. Meadows to waive Executive Privilege or to forfeit the long-standing position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress,” attorney George Terwilliger said. “We appreciate the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics.”
Mark Meadows saying that he'll 'cooperate' except for certain subjects like Donald Trump is like Jeffrey Dahmer saying he'll talk about everything but what's in the freezer.
It's ultimately meaningless.
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) November 30, 2021
CNN reports:
Even though Meadows has begun engaging with the committee in a more serious way, the extent to which he will fully cooperate and the question of what he will try to claim as executive privilege still hangs in the balance, according to multiple sources. The agreement means the committee will hold off from pursuing criminal contempt against him, though that route always remains a possibility as this fragile step forward could be temporary.
Meadows’ decision to cooperate with the committee comes just one week after Steve Bannon was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and hand over documents in response to a subpoena from the committee.
Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has reportedly caved and is now fully cooperating with the January 6th Committee. This comes after Ali Alexander also agreed to cooperate. The committee’s indictment of Bannon, and threat to indict Meadows, is clearly working.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) November 30, 2021
“It is fair to say [Meadows] is not Bannon,” a source tells CNN, “and he doesn’t want to be. But how much he is cooperating, and how much he will cooperate remains an open question. He has done some things … but he has not fulfilled all his obligations … and it is not entirely clear yet how much he will cooperate.”
“We can tell the difference between someone who is stalling or faking, we don’t think that’s what is going on here,” the source adds.
Graham Gremore is the Features Editor and a Staff Writer at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.
Jaquelope
If he was only an aide, how can he claim “executive privilege”? Where’d this position come from, that “Senior aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress”? The way I understood it, none of the three branches of government can make any rule that impedes another branch from doing its duty.
Mr. Stadnick
“Donald Trump is probably freaking out right” not the start of a proper news story. It is supposition. One of the first things you are taught in journalism class is not to use supposition.
SeaCapp
And you have just summed up one of our country’s major issues. Queerty is not journalism and journalism is not Queerty. Please learn to understand the difference between entertainment and news. This would serve many others as well. Just because it’s published online or aired on cable does not make it journalism.
joverit
If he, his children and foreign gold-digging escort were on fire and nobody would offer to pee on them, that would be very, very, very bad news for Donald Trump…
Fahd
He’s cooperating? Let’s see how this dance unfolds, especially since his attorney is named Terwilliger which if I’m recalling correctly is actually a name from the old Lucy shows.
Chip
This means noting. This will change nothing. Nothing will come of this. Justice in America doesn’t exist. Especially when you’re rich.
Ronbo
We have been told this many, many times Graham, Chip is correct. We’ve been trained to get our hopes up, just to be beaten down. Until it happens it has not happened.
How many times have we been fed red meat only to find
Kangol2
Between this news, the story about Drumpf’s Covid-19 positive status and his lies before the first Biden debate and the revelations at the Ghislaine Maxwell trial–that Don the Con did fly on pedo Epstein’s pedo express and that Epstein brought a 14-year-old down to meet Don the Con personally–Donny Two Scoops might be truly sweating a bit!