(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Guess which Trumpland official is refusing to come in and tell the January 6 Select Committee about trying to overturn the election based on a conspiracy theory about Italian space lasers?
That’s right, it’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the guy who pressured the Justice Department to investigate a whole raft of insane nonsense as a pretext to deny Pres. Biden’s electoral victory. The Guardian broke the news this morning that Meadows will be defying a congressional subpoena to appear before the Committee on October 15, along with Trump aide Dan Scavino, former Defense Department Chief of Staff Kash Patel, and scabrous podcaster Steve Bannon.
No points will be awarded for guessing that Meadows would never show up — for one thing, we ourselves predicted it months ago. And indeed his master has been making noises for weeks about asserting executive privilege to block the Committee.
The “Unselect Committee” of highly partisan politicians, a similar group that perpetrated the now proven lie of Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and many other Scams, has sent out Harassment Subpoenas on Jan. 6th so that the Government of the United States can continue wasting time while Russia, China, and virtually every other country that deals with our Nation can continue to “eat our lunch,” and laugh at the stupidity of what is going on at our Southern Border, and the worst withdrawal from a war zone by any Nation in history—all of this while the Democrats persecute and prosecute Republicans which is, together with Rigging Elections, essentially all they know how to do. We will fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America.
Ah, that 2018 feeling! Who doesn’t miss it, right?
The question of whether an ex-president retains the prerogative to assert privilege remains an open one, but the claim is even more tenuous when applied to Meadows and Scavino’s communications with the outside groups organizing the January 6 assembly, including leaders of the group Women for America First, who have also been subpoenaed.
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Scavino has been ducking the House’s process server like a common Donald Trump. Or Rudy Giuliani. Or Mo Brooks. Or Sidney Powell.
As for Patel, he wasn’t a senior presidential advisor within the traditional understanding of executive privilege, and will presumably try to wrap himself in the magical blanket of privilege that the Trump administration insisted was big enough to cover the entire executive branch, even employees many removes away from the president performing purely ministerial tasks.
Assuming the story is correct that all four men will be flipping the bird to congress, Bannon’s claim to privilege is the most preposterous, since he wasn’t even employed by the government when his fans stormed the seat of government. He did, however, get a presidential pardon for his role in a scheme to defraud donors to a homebrew border wall scheme, so … make of that one what you will.
The Guardian reports that this entire exercise may be more of a delay tactic by campaign lawyer Justin Clark and attorney Patrick Philbin, AKA that Milhouse Van Houten clone from the White House Counsel’s Office who represented Trump at the first impeachment.
Philbin appears less convinced than Trump about the strength of the legal argument, the source said, in part because the justice department previously declined to assert the protection for 6 January testimony, suggesting it did not exist to protect Trump’s personal interests.
The former president’s lawyer, the source said, instead seems to view the strategy more as an effective way to slow-walk the select committee, which is aiming to produce a final report before the 2022 midterm elections, to keep the inquiry non-partisan.
(Was the parking lot lawyer too busy filing garbage civil suits against Trump’s family members to lend a hand here?)
CNN reports that “several people close to the former president have told CNN in recent days that they are not aware of a legal strategy taking shape” for Trump to actually assert executive privilege other than reminding the goon squad that snitches get stitches. But assuming Philbin and Clark aren’t completely asleep at the wheel, they’ll be filing suit against the National Archivist to prevent disclosure of the records subpoenaed by the Committee toot sweet.
As for the Committee itself, it has far greater latitude to compel cooperation than it did during the Trump years when the executive branch routinely blew off congress, safe in the knowledge that Bill Barr would be disregarding all requests to prosecute for contempt of congress. Chair Bennie Thompson has already said, “For those who don’t agree to come in voluntarily, we’ll do criminal referrals.” And Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Committee, confirmed to CNN that investigators would not be taking no for an answer: “I mean, there is civil, there is criminal referrals that can happen if they refuse, refusing a subpoena from congress is a crime.”
Gentlemen, start your engines. You, too, Steve Bannon.
Top Trump aides set to defy subpoenas in Capitol attack investigation [The Guardian]
House committee investigating January 6 can’t find Trump aide to serve subpoena [CNN]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.