WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final White Household chief of personnel, failed to seem for a deposition Friday before the Home find committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.
Meadows did not appear for the deposition on Capitol Hill, in accordance to two resources familiar with his absence. It was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. ET, and about 10 minutes later close to a dozen committee workers and investigators walked out of the area together with the stenographer.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Pass up., and position member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., afterwards verified Meadows was a no-demonstrate, and threatened to go after contempt of Congress proceedings.
“Mr. Meadows’s steps today—choosing to defy the law—will drive the Choose Committee to think about pursuing contempt or other proceedings to implement the subpoena,” the two lawmakers said in a joint assertion, adding that Meadows has “failed to response even the most standard questions.”
“If his defiance persists and that process moves ahead, the document will expose the wide range of issues the Pick out Committee wished to explore with Mr. Meadows right until his conclusion to hide driving the previous President’s spurious claims of privilege. Many of these issues are not even conceivably subject to any privilege declare,” they claimed.
The assertion was introduced shortly following the Justice Division introduced former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had been indicted for contempt of Congress for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas.
His failure to exhibit up comes a day immediately after his attorney, George Terwilliger, recommended that Meadows would not cooperate with the committee.
“Contrary to many years of steady bipartisan views from the Justice Department that senior aides are not able to be compelled by Congress to give testimony, this is the first President to make no effort in any respect to shield presidential communications from staying the matter of compelled testimony,” he claimed in a assertion. “Mr. Meadows stays less than the guidelines of previous President Trump to regard longstanding ideas of executive privilege. It now seems the courts will have to solve this conflict.”
Thompson had warned in a letter that the panel still predicted Meadows to create “all responsive paperwork and show up for deposition testimony tomorrow.”
“If there are unique inquiries during that deposition that you believe raise legitimate privilege problems, Mr. Meadows should point out them at that time on the history for the Pick Committee’s thing to consider and possible judicial review,” Thompson wrote.
The committee had also been anticipating to get paperwork similar to Trump and the Jan. 6 attack from the Countrywide Archives on Friday, but a federal appeals court on Thursday granted Trump’s ask for to quickly block them from being handed more than.
Dareh Gregorian contributed.