Ex-Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to cooperate with Jan. 6 panel

Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump‘s last chief of staff and was involved in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, is now cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. ABCNews reported.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the panel, said in a statement that Meadows has been “engaging” with the panel through his lawyer, providing records to the committee “and will soon appear for an initial deposition.”

Meadows was subpoenaed by the committee in late September for records and testimony regarding his and Trump’s activities before and during the Capitol riot.

“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition,” the committee said in a statement Tuesday. “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.”

His lawyer initially said Meadows wouldn’t cooperate with the committee because of Trump’s plans to assert executive privilege, an argument dismissed by the committee, whose members will vote this week to hold former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in contempt of Congress for ignoring the panel’s subpoenas.

“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,” Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement Tuesday. “We appreciate the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the panel, said over the weekend that the committee would decide whether to hold Meadows in contempt this week.

The Biden White House had already said it would not assert privilege over Meadows’ testimony.

Earlier this month, Trump adviser Steve Bannon was charged by the Justice Department with criminal contempt of Congress for spurning the committee’s subpoena. Bannon, who was not serving in the White House at the time of the Jan. 6 rally, has pleaded not guilty.

Former senior Pentagon official Kash Patel and Trump aide Dan Scavino were also subpoenaed by the committee in late September, along with Meadows and Bannon, but it’s not clear whether either has cooperated with the committee of late.

The panel has conducted more than 150 interviews and issued roughly 45 subpoenas as part of its inquiry.