If it's what you say I love it, especially on January 6

 

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who "frequently cries at work." Screenshot from video at Huffpost.

aardvarkcheeselog comments:

Is there any doubt at all that Mark Meadows defied a Congressional subpoena? What is the hold-up on indicting him for that, since Congress declined to do so on their own hook?

It would be easier to expect good faith from DOJ if they were doing anything to discipline scofflaws that don't need cases built against them. Maybe I am not paying enough attention to news and am missing reports about this?

It might be interesting to ask why Congress declined to do it on their own and kicked the can over to DOJ instead. It's my impression that they have almost never done that historically, but they've done it four times in the January 6 investigation: for Bannon in October, for Meadows in January, and for Scavino and Navarro last week.

The procedure for criminal contempt (as opposed to inherent contempt, handled by Congress, or civil contempt, for the Senate, when they sue the party in civil court), is:

Following a contempt citation, the presiding officer of the chamber is instructed to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia;^[20] according to the law it is the duty of the U.S. Attorney to refer the matter to a grand jury for action.

So in Bannon's case the grand jury did issue an indictment pretty quickly, in just a few weeks, and nothing further seems to have happened, nothing at all has happened with the Meadows complaint, and it's certainly too soon to ask about the other two.

So what has happened to the Meadows complaint? Prosecutors were required to do something with it, and my hypothesis is that they've folded it into something bigger negotiations for a cooperation agreement in which he will cooperate with the investigation and in turn face relatively light criminal charges, in which criminal contempt of Congress (1-12 months in jail and $100-$100,000 in fines) could certainly play a role.

At the time he first rejected the demand that he give the committee a deposition, in December,

Mr. Thompson said Mr. Meadows had provided some useful information to the committee, including a November email that discussed appointing an alternate slate of electors to keep Mr. Trump in power and a Jan. 5 message about putting the National Guard on standby.

Mr. Meadows also turned over to the committee his text messages with a member of Congress in which the lawmaker acknowledged that a plan to object to Mr. Biden’s victory would be “highly controversial,” to which Mr. Meadows responded, “I love it.” And he furnished text exchanges about the need for Mr. Trump to issue a public statement on Jan. 6 aimed at persuading the mob marauding through the Capitol in his name to stand down.

But Mr. Meadows also informed the committee he had turned in the cellphone he used on Jan. 6 to his service provider, and he was withholding some 1,000 text messages connected with the device, Mr. Thompson said, prompting additional questions and the need for more cooperation and a deposition.

Meadows has committed more crimes than the House committee is prepared to charge him with; we're starting to get a sense of it through the leaked text messages, which show him operating as a coup planning communications center, fielding demands from volunteer insurgents, from Junior to Ginni, to pass up the hierarchy. "I love it!" He also had that reputation for getting weepy under stress. He needs to be made to tell what he knows first, before he goes to jail.