Report: Meadows Turning Over More Texts, Emails Since Mar-a-Lago Raid
Former President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is turning over more texts and emails to the National Archives since the FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida Aug. 8,
CNN reported.
"It could be a coincidence, but within a week of the Aug. 8 search on Mar-a-Lago, much more started coming in," one source familiar with the discussions told CNN in the report Friday.
According to the report, the archives asked Meadows for all electronic communications under the Presidential Records Act and believed it did not have all the information it had requested after learning what he had given to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 protest and riot at the U.S. Capitol.
His effort to cooperate and turn over more of the information came after 30 armed FBI agents executed a federal search warrant at Trump’s Palm Beach home in Florida on Aug. 8, removing dozens of boxes of materials, some of which the Department of Justice believes were classified, according to the search warrant.
The CNN report said that the documents Meadows turned over were not classified, and the situation was different from that of Trump.
"This is how it's supposed to work," the source told CNN.
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Meadows to appear and threatened him with a criminal contempt of Congress charge but decided not to pursue that route after Meadows filed a lawsuit of his own against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claiming executive privilege,
Politico reported.
In a
July legal filing from the Justice Department in the case, it is argued that advisers to a former president could still be held accountable and not immune under an assertion of executive privilege, something that goes against past precedent.
"When a congressional committee demands testimony from an immediate presidential adviser after the president's term of office has ended, the relevant constitutional concerns are lessened. Accordingly, the department does not believe that the absolute testimonial immunity applicable to such an adviser continues after the president leaves office. But the constitutional concerns continue to have force," the filing said. "In the Department of Justice's view, a form of qualified immunity is appropriate to address those continuing and significant separation-of-powers concerns."
Meadows' attorney, George Terwilliger III told Politico the DOJ filing was "at odds" with its own Office of Legal Counsel's position through the years.
"The judge simply asked DOJ if it stood by the bipartisan OLC opinions developed over decades; instead of the simple yes the filing initially provides, a different DOJ unit elected to become an advocate for the committee and urged the court to go into untested legal waters," Terwilliger said in the July article. "We will explain to the judge in due course why OLC is right and the Civil Division's suggestion is a really bad idea."
www.cnn.com
Looks like the red hot poker is doing it's job.
