Trump’s ‘Keeper of the Secrets’ Ordered to Testify in Georgia’s Criminal Investigation Into Former President

Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows was ordered Tuesday by South Carolina’s Supreme Court to appear before the Fulton County grand jury investigating then-president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

“We have reviewed the arguments raised by Appellant and find them to be manifestly without merit,” South Carolina’s Supreme Court justices wrote in a unanimous decision affirming the lower court’s order for Meadows to appear for sworn testimony in District Attorney Fani Willis’ criminal investigation.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace broke the news on air and spoke of the weight of the ruling with PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor and the Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes.

“The courts take much longer than I think some of us aching for accountability would like them to. But Trump and his cronies keep losing. Mark Meadows Being ordered to testify is so huge. He went down to Georgia, separate from and in advance of Trump’s call with Raffensperger. He was on the call when Trump orders Raffensperger to, quote, find him 11,780 votes. He was a party to everything that went on to try to rig the counting in Georgia,” Wallace began.

“Certainly. I mean, if you think of former President Trump’s White House, he was, you know, he had the title of chief of staff. He was also the president’s right-hand man when it comes to efforts, alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” Alcindor replied, adding:

Let’s remember that when people at Fox News and other places, right-wing people who are supportive of former President Trump when they were alarmed by on January six, it was Mark Meadows that they were texting to say, hey, even for us, this has gone too far.

That tells you just how close he was the president and the fact that he was seen as a sort of gatekeeper to former President Trump when it came to information. He was also someone that repeatedly we heard during the January 6th hearing, but someone who really refused to ever real former President Trump in. You had chief of staff in the past. You think of General Kelly who was complicit in some regards but definitely tried to put up barriers and also tried to say to former President Trump, ‘Hey, you cannot do this. Here are the things that just do not seem presidential.’

“By the time you got to Mark Meadows, he was after a number of other chiefs of staff had left the White House. He was someone who was very much aligned with former President Trump’s views of things, including his his his obsession, really,” Alcindor continued, noting:

I think that’s what you would call it, especially this way critics would call it, we’re trying to get this this election, this 2020 election overturn. So it is a very big deal that he might now be forced to answer questions under oath about his conversations with former President Trump about the efforts to try to overturn the election there. As you said, he was on the call when when Trump was saying, get me those 11,000 votes.

I think he has someone who will definitely have a lot of information. Of course, we’ll see how this turns out. But it seems as though when it comes to Fulton County and you look at sort of Lindsey Graham and what happened with that decision that people are being told you have to come and you have to be part of this investigation.

“So Charlie Sykes, close viewers of this program, will remember Cassidy Hutchinson has already been to Georgia. She was Mark Meadows, right-hand person to borrow Yamiche’s description of how this Trump White House operated. They likely already know everything that Mark Meadows did. And I wonder, what do you make of what Mark Meadows may sort of what circles he may close in terms of what Trump knew and what Meadows knew and what they did?” Wallace then asked.

“Well, first of all, it was very interesting that this Supreme Court decision was unanimous and was so definitive,” Sykes replied, adding:

I mean, it was a slam dunk against Mark Meadows telling him that he had to go in and testify. But as Yamiche points out, Mark Meadows is at the center of everything. And he turned over all of his text messages to the January 6th committee before his master’s voice told him not to actually testify.

And those text messages basically do confirm that he is the nexus of everything that was going on, that everyone was communicating to him. All roads lead to and through Mark Meadows. So, yes, I’m sure that Cassidy Hutchinson gave a great deal of information. But if Mark Meadows were ever to flip on the president, it would be one of Donald Trump’s worst days, legal days, because he was he was very much the keeper of the secrets.

“And, you know, so, yeah, Cassidy Hutchinson probably gave him a lot of information. But my sense, based on looking at the text messages that we’ve already read, is that Mark Meadows knows a lot more whether he’s willing to testify to it. We will hopefully we will eventually find out,” Sykes concluded.

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC