The Guy Who Knows Where All of Trump’s Bodies Are Buried Is Cooperating With the January 6 Committee

As he’s made abundantly clear through lawsuits, legal posturing, and unhinged statements on the matter, Donald Trump very much does not want the House select committee investigating January 6 to know what he was doing before, during, and after the Capitol was attacked by his bloodthirsty supporters. Why is this? We won’t claim to understand what’s going on inside the moldy pile of meatloaf that is the ex-president’s head, but we will note that if he thought the behind-the-scenes details made him look better—like if he could say that he was giving orphans a tour of the East Wing when he was first alerted to the violence, or that he was preparing for a photo shoot for People’s Sexiest Man Alive cover—he would want that information out there faster than you can say “fascist insurrection.” (While Trump has claimed that he’s fighting the release of documents to the House committee in order to protect future presidents, we can say with a high degree of confidence that that’s bullshit, as the man has never done a selfless thing in his entire life.) Which makes the news that his fourth and final chief of staff—the guy who was by his side both through all the false election-fraud claims and the violent attempt to overturn democracy—is cooperating with congressional investigators probably extremely unwelcome!

The Washington Post reports that Mark Meadows has been complying with the House’s probe, though it initially looked like he would follow in the footsteps of Steve Bannon and stonewall the whole thing, which led to the latter being criminally indicted earlier this month and facing up to two years in prison if convicted. In a statement, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said, “Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the select committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition.”

According to a report from Rolling Stone, planners of the pro-Trump rallies that preceded the attack on the Capitol said Meadows played a major role in conversations surrounding the events leading up to the insurrection. “Meadows was 100% made aware of what was going on,” a source told the outlet. He also urged Georgia’s secretary of state, in the “spirit of cooperation and compromise,” to find a way to overturn Georgia’s election results during the infamous phone call in which Trump demanded Brad Raffensperger just “find” 11,000-plus votes. And he repeatedly pressed then acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to have the Justice Department investigate baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud, including one claiming that people in Italy used satellites to turn Trump votes into Biden ones. Oh, and he was reportedly one of the few people Trump would listen to on the day and night of the attack.

In a statement to CNN, Meadows’s lawyer said there is now an understanding between the former chief of staff and investigators on how information can be shared going forward, adding that both sides are open to engaging, a turn of events we assume has led to a very bad day at Mar-a-Lago, particularly for the busboy who just wanted to clear his tables and clock out when he found himself on the receiving end of a incomprehensible tirade about traitors and Democrats and the scourge of low-flow toilets.

Of course, it’s not all good news for people hoping to see Trump held accountable for the first time in his 75 years on earth. For one thing, Meadows is still a Trump loyalist who…well, you read the thing about Italian satellites, right? For another, his lawyer has already suggested that certain things Meadows knows fall under executive privilege, and thus he should not be “compelled” to share them.

In happier news that may make Meadows’s (and his ex-boss’s) executive privilege claims moot, there’s this, per Politico:

Three federal appellate judges appear likely to reject Donald Trump’s effort to block January 6 investigators from obtaining his White House records—a big potential boost for lawmakers hoping to reveal the former president’s actions as a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.

As they questioned Trump’s lawyers, the judges repeatedly expressed skepticism that a former president could override a decision by the sitting president—in this case Joe Biden—to release documents to Congress, particularly when the incumbent has decided it’s in the national interest to release records to investigators…. The files at issue are drawn from former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former adviser Stephen Miller, former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, and former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, among other top Trump aides. The National Archives has identified the documents in periodic batches since early September and expects to produce additional tranches in the coming months.

“We have one president at a time under our constitution,” Judge Patricia Millett said on Tuesday. “That incumbent president…has made the judgment and is best positioned, as the Supreme Court has told us, to make that call as to the interests of the executive branch.”

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