(Washington) In the end, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, will not cooperate with the parliamentary committee supposed to shed light on the assault on Capitol Hill, contrary to what he had pledged to do. do, according to a letter from his lawyer on Tuesday.
Mark Meadows was supposed to be the first of Donald Trump’s relatives to agree to testify before this so-called “January 6” commission, when thousands of supporters of the former president invaded the seat of the United States Congress in an attempt to prevent the elected officials to certify the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential election.
The former right-hand man of Donald Trump in the White House agreed to provide “thousands of pages of documents” to investigators and was ready to testify, indicates his lawyer George Terwilliger in a letter to the commission obtained by several American media.
PHOTO OLIVIER DOULIÉRY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, will not cooperate with the parliamentary committee supposed to shed light on the assault on Capitol Hill.
But, he assures, this commission has “no intention of respecting the right of the executive to keep certain information secret”, which “makes this hearing untenable”.
The elected officials who are leading this investigation are particularly interested in the exchanges between Mark Meadows and the organizers of the January 6 demonstrations.
Usually very discreet, this 62-year-old man came out of the shadows last week by announcing a few days apart his cooperation with investigators and the upcoming release of a book on the last months of the Republican billionaire at the White House.
Meadows risks being accused
By ultimately refusing to testify before this commission, Donald Trump’s last chief of staff potentially risks indictment.
His lawyer did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests.
Another ally of the Republican billionaire, Steve Bannon, has already been indicted for the same reason and faces prison. His trial will begin on July 18.
The commission, which is investigating the role of the former president and his advisers in this attack, has already questioned more than a hundred people and is increasing the number of subpoenas in Donald Trump’s entourage.
But the former tenant of the White House, who describes the commission as “highly biased”, ordered those around him to close ranks, an injunction to which Mark Meadows seems in part to have complied.
Supporters of the former US president are doing their best to minimize these events, calling the January 6 parliamentary inquiry a “witch hunt”, one of Donald Trump’s favorite expressions.
The treatment offered to those imprisoned since the assault on Capitol Hill would be worse than that reserved “for terrorists at Guantanamo”, according to Trumpist elected Marjorie Taylor Greene at a press conference on Tuesday.