Jan. 6 committee refers Meadows for contempt of Congress charges

Text messages and emails turned over to the committee show Meadows strongly supported the scheme by Trump to encourage Republican state leaders to change which electors they were going to have certify the election, replacing their electors with representatives who would overthrow the election and vote for Trump instead. "I love it," the report notes Meadows said of the idea.

Meadows also visited Georgia in the days after the election to oversee an audit of the votes, an action he refused to provide the committee further detail on.

The report also highlights Meadows' connections to another former Trump administration official who has also defied compliance with the panel's investigation and faces potential contempt charges.

Meadows reportedly introduced the then-president to former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark who went on to become a close Trump confidante and urged officials within the department to tell states the election was under investigation in order to delay the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.

“When the records raise questions, as these most certainly do, you have to come in and answer those questions, and when it was time for him to follow the law, come in and testify on those questions, he changed his mind and told us to pound sand. He didn’t even show up," Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said.

Meadows has repeatedly asserted that his former position as a White House official provides him with executive privilege and exempts him from discussing certain topics and turning over some documents to the committee, even going so far as to sue the committee over its subpoenas calling for him to testify.

The lawsuit slams the subpoenas for information from Meadows as "overly broad and unduly burdensome" and refers to the panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack as an "entirely partisan select committee."

The committee rejected the idea that executive privilege protections would cover all, if any, of the topics Meadows has evaded questioning on.

The report emphasized that no claims by Trump that executive privilege applies to Meadows have been reported to the panel and Biden has repeatedly emphasized that former officials are not immune from disclosing information critical to the Jan. 6 investigation.

"The Select Committee is confident that there is no conceivable immunity or executive privilege claim that could bar all of the Select Committee’s requests or justify Mr. Meadows’s blanket refusal to appear for the required deposition," the report reads.

It also pointed out the potential contradiction of Meadows' claims that information about his time in the White House is immune from public disclosure as he promotes his recently published book, "The Chief's Chief," which details his time in the White House and touches on the events of Jan. 6.

"And it is untenable in light of Mr. Meadows’s public descriptions of events in the book that he is trying to sell and during his numerous television appearances," the committee's report said of Meadows' claims of executive privilege.

Meadows isn't alone in his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the committee. Clark and former White House strategist Steve Bannon have both defied calls to aid the committee in its investigation. But the committee has retaliated to their refusals in kind.

Bannon was charged with and has pleaded not guilty to criminal contempt of Congress charges and the committee recommended the House vote to find Clark in contempt late last month.

Ahead of the Monday night vote, Thompson spoke directly to the officials who have defied the committee's subpoenas.

“If you are listening at home, Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Clark, I want you to know this: History will be written about these times, about the work this committee has undertaken, and history will not look upon any of you as martyrs. History will not look upon you as a victim. History will not dwell upon your long list of privileged claims or your legal sleight of hand. History will record that in a critical moment in our democracy, most people were on the side of finding the truth of providing accountability of strengthening our system for future generations. And history will also record in this critical moment that some people were not, That some people hid behind excuses, went to great lengths to avoid answering questions and explaining what they had done and what they new. I predict that history will not be kind to those people," Thompson said.

Despite these roadblocks from former Trump officials, the committee has met with almost 300 witnesses ranging from White House aides to rally organizers and government officials and plans to meet with a dozen witnesses in the coming week according to Thompson.

Thompson said the committee has obtained more than 30,000 records throughout its investigation and aims to hold public hearings in the coming weeks once it “can tell the story all at once, start to finish."

But the continued threats of contempt have brought additional political ire from Republicans who have criticized the committee's investigation as a partisan endeavor and who will likely dissolve the investigation altogether if the GOP gains control of the House in 2022, leaving the panel with limited time to dig into the details of the events that led up to and played out on Jan. 6.

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