Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House January 6th Inquisition, arguing a subpoena unconstitutionally intrudes on Trump’s powers to invoke executive privilege. Meadows filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington against Pelosi, the members of the committee and the committee itself. “The […]
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House January 6th Inquisition, arguing a subpoena unconstitutionally intrudes on Trump’s powers to invoke executive privilege.
Meadows filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington against Pelosi, the members of the committee and the committee itself.
“The Select Committee acts absent any valid legislative power and threatens to violate longstanding principles of executive privilege and immunity that are of constitutional origin and dimension,” the suit reads.
The committee signaled that it is preparing to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate, a move that would send the matter to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges, Politico reports.
When asked about the lawsuit, committee chair Rep. Bennie Thimpson said the panel will still move forward.
“We will fight it out in court, and we will move with as much expeditious format as we can,” he said.
As previously reported by Human Events News, Meadows stopped cooperating with the House January 6th Inquisition despite previous efforts to work with them.
Meadows and his attorney, George Terwilliger, informed the committee last week after Meadows could not come to terms with lawmakers on an arrangement to work with them.
“Over the last several weeks, Mr. Meadows has consistently sought in good faith to pursue an accommodation with the Select Committee and up until yesterday we believed that could be obtained,” Terwilliger said in a letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney. He added that Meadows “consistently communicated” that he could not make “a unilateral decision to waive Executive Privilege claims asserted by the former president.”
“The chairman of the committee...publicly said that another witness’s claiming of the Fifth Amendment would be tantamount to an admission of guilt,” Terwilliger said, adding that this called into question “exactly what is going on with this committee.”
“It is well-established that Congress’ subpoena authority is limited to the pursuit of a legitimate legislative purpose,” he continued. “Congress has no authority to conduct law enforcement investigations or free-standing ‘fact finding’ missions.”
