Mark Meadows Expected to Face Criminal Contempt Hearings After Failing to Show Up Before House Jan. 6 Committee

The select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is expected to recommend criminal contempt charges against former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after he failed to appear before the committee by a 10 a.m. deadline on Friday.

Meadows and his lawyer believe that the former White House chief of staff is protected by executive privilege. Former President Donald Trump has tried to use the executive privilege excuse and, after being denied by a federal court to do so, an appeals court put a temporary hold on the release of documents from the Trump administration that the Biden administration has declined to protect via executive privilege.

In a letter on Thursday to Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger III, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) wrote that “there is no valid legal basis for Mr. Meadows’s continued resistance to the Select Committee’s subpoena.”

Thompson mentioned that in Terwilliger’s “letters and telephone conversations with the select committee,” he has “indicated that Mr. Meadows ‘is immune from compelled congressional testimony on matters related to his official responsibilities.’”

Were Meadows to not appear before the committee by the deadline and “to produce responsive documents or a privilege log indicating the specific basis for withholding any documents you believe are protected by privilege, as willful non-compliance,” said Thompson, the committee would proceed with criminal contempt hearings, “which could result in a referral from the House of Representatives to the Department of Justice for criminal charges” in addition to “the possibility of having a civil action to enforce the subpoena brought against Mr. Meadows in his personal capacity.”

Ultimately, the Department of Justice has the final say in whether criminal contempt charges will be brought against Meadows or anyone else.

Watch above, via CNN.