The brazen attitude of the January 6th select committee is purposeful, there is no doubt about that, and their latest string of actions is acting as a warning to those who would attempt to slow-walk their cooperation with the group.
You see, the committee has but a year or so to complete their work, before the Republicans’ red wave comes crashing down on their heads in the 2022 midterms. If Congress goes conservative, the committee is kaput, essentially, and so the desperate nature of their work is turning to outright flailing at the moment.
You can smell the stench of fear through their actions, and this week was no exception.
Mark Meadows’s cooperation with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection appears to be over as quickly as it started.
Just one week after the committee announced it had reached an agreement with Donald Trump’s former chief of staff to produce records and appear for an initial deposition, Fox News reported Tuesday morning that Meadows and his attorney were planning to notify lawmakers on the House panel that they could not reach an understanding on how to work together.
And then came the desperate plot…
Meadows was scheduled to appear before the select committee on Wednesday. In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., warned that they will go forward with the deposition as planned.
“If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution,” they said.
“Even as we litigate privilege issues, the Select Committee has numerous questions for Mr. Meadows about records he has turned over to the Committee with no claim of privilege, which include real-time communications with many individuals as the events of January 6th unfolded,” read the statement from Thompson and Cheney. “We also need to hear from him about voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts, which were required to be turned over to the National Archives in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.”
The committee has already held former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt, with a trial on that charge expected in July of next year.
