Former Trump aide Mark Meadows fails to surface in advance of Jan. 6 committee

WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final White House chief of workers, unsuccessful to show up for a deposition Friday ahead of the House decide on committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.

Meadows did not show up for the deposition on Capitol Hill, according to two resources acquainted with his absence. It was scheduled to start off at 10 a.m. ET, and about 10 minutes later on close to a dozen committee team and investigators walked out of the place along with the stenographer.

Committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and ranking member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., afterwards confirmed Meadows was a no-demonstrate, and threatened to pursue contempt of Congress proceedings.

“Mr. Meadows’s steps today—choosing to defy the law—will pressure the Pick out Committee to contemplate pursuing contempt or other proceedings to enforce the subpoena,” the two lawmakers reported in a joint statement, adding that Meadows has “failed to remedy even the most basic concerns.”

“If his defiance persists and that process moves ahead, the document will reveal the large vary of issues the Pick Committee wished to explore with Mr. Meadows until finally his decision to disguise at the rear of the former President’s spurious claims of privilege. Many of people issues are not even conceivably issue to any privilege declare,” they explained.

The assertion was launched soon immediately after the Justice Division introduced former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had been indicted for contempt of Congress for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas.

His failure to display up arrives a day just after his lawyer, George Terwilliger, advised that Meadows would not cooperate with the committee.

“Contrary to decades of reliable bipartisan opinions from the Justice Division that senior aides are not able to be compelled by Congress to give testimony, this is the initially President to make no exertion in any way to defend presidential communications from currently being the subject of compelled testimony,” he stated in a assertion. “Mr. Meadows continues to be beneath the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding ideas of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to solve this conflict.”

Thompson experienced warned in a letter that the panel however anticipated Meadows to generate “all responsive paperwork and look for deposition testimony tomorrow.”

“If there are unique questions through that deposition that you think elevate respectable privilege issues, Mr. Meadows should condition them at that time on the file for the Decide on Committee’s thing to consider and possible judicial review,” Thompson wrote.

The committee experienced also been anticipating to obtain files connected to Trump and the Jan. 6 assault from the Countrywide Archives on Friday, but a federal appeals courtroom on Thursday granted Trump’s ask for to temporarily block them from becoming handed over.

Dareh Gregorian contributed.