DOJ Won’t Charge Trump Allies Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for Defying Congressional Subpoenas
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The Department of Justice will not prosecute former White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows and Deputy Chief-of-Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, the New York Times reported on Friday night.
The two were subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 Committee investigating the Capitol riot. Meadows initially cooperated with the panel and handed over a trove of communications, but has since stopped assisting in the probe. Scavino negotiated with the panel via his lawyers before ultimately refusing to cooperate.
The House of Representatives had referred the Meadows and Scavino cases to the DOJ to urge that criminal charges be brought against them.
The Times cited a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. to the House general counsel on Friday:
“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral against Messrs. Meadows and Scavino,” Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, on Friday. “My office’s review of each of the contempt referrals arising from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation is complete.”
Earlier in the day, the DOJ arrested former Trump advisor Peter Navarro after he defied a similar committee subpoena. He’s being charged with criminal contempt of Congress. Another former Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, is also facing criminal charges for defying a congressional subpoena.
Bannon and Navarro appeared to be at the forefront of a plot to get Congress to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election when it convened to do so on Jan. 6, 2021.
The effort failed. That day a mob of angry Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and succeeded in delaying the certification for several hours.
On Friday, Navarro raged outside a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. after he was indicted.
“They responded with effectively the same kind of thing you’d see in Stalin‘s Russia or the Chinese Communist Party,” Navarro said of the government’s treatment of him.
