Trump White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows geese Jan. 6 riot panel

Trump White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows failed to seem Friday for a scheduled deposition for the choose Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Meadows’ no-show on the panel, which was anticipated after his lawyer mentioned Thursday he wouldn’t seem regardless of a subpoena demanding his testimony, might result in him being present in contempt of Congress, the panel beforehand warned.

That, in flip, might result in a referral to the Division of Justice for attainable legal expenses, the panel’s chairman mentioned Thursday.

The Home on Oct. 21 voted to carry Steve Bannon, a former senior Trump White Home advisor, in contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena for his deposition and information. The Justice Division has not determined whether or not to prosecute Bannon for legal contempt.

Choose Home committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., advised Meadows’ lawyer in a letter Thursday, “Merely put, there is no such thing as a legitimate authorized foundation for Mr. Meadows’s continued resistance to the Choose Committee’s subpoena.”

The Republican Meadows, who beforehand represented a North Carolina district within the Home, and Bannon are amongst greater than a dozen former Trump White Home officers and allies who’ve obtained subpoenas for testimony and paperwork from the choose committee.

The panel is probing occasions main as much as and through the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol advanced by a horde of supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The riot disrupted a joint session of Congress that was certifying the Electoral Faculty victory of President Joe Biden in his race in opposition to Trump.

Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger III, mentioned in a press release Thursday that his shopper’s resolution to not adjust to the Home subpoena is the results of an order from Trump, who claims that such testimony would violate the manager privilege accorded presidents.

Biden has refused to invoke govt privilege for Trump officers and information within the Home’s inquiry.

Terwilliger in his assertion famous that reality, writing, “Opposite to many years of constant bipartisan opinions from the Justice Division that senior aides can’t be compelled by Congress to offer testimony, that is the primary President to make no effort by any means to guard presidential communications from being the topic of compelled testimony.”

“Mr. Meadows stays underneath the directions of former President Trump to respect longstanding rules of govt privilege,” Terwilliger wrote. “It now seems the courts must resolve this battle.”

Trump has made the identical argument based mostly on govt privilege in a lawsuit searching for to bar the Nationwide Archives from transferring information from his administration to the Home committee.

That lawsuit is now earlier than the federal appeals court docket in Washington after a district choose dominated that Trump, as a former president, doesn’t have the facility to invoke govt privilege on this problem.

Thompson, in a letter to Terwilliger, mentioned, “The regulation requires that Mr. Meadows adjust to the subpoena absent an relevant immunity or legitimate assertion of a Constitutionally based mostly privilege.”

Thompson connected a letter from the White Home counsel’s workplace, which, he wrote, “eviscerates any believable declare of testimonial immunity or govt privilege, and compels compliance with the Choose Committee’s subpoena.”

He concluded by writing that Meadows’ failure to seem for his deposition and his failure to supply paperwork underneath the subpoena might end in legal and/or civil motion in opposition to him.

“Such willful non-compliance with the subpoena would power the Choose Committee to think about invoking the contempt of Congress procedures … which might end in a referral from the Home of Representatives to the Division of Justice for legal expenses — in addition to the opportunity of having a civil motion to implement the subpoena introduced in opposition to Mr. Meadows in his private capability,” Thompson wrote.