Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and all nine members of the House Select Committee on Wednesday amid investigations of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, a court filing shows.
Meadows filed a civil lawsuit as the select panel plans to hold the former chief of staff in contempt for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena and testify for the Jan. 6 investigations. At the time, then-President Donald Trump's supporters gathered and stormed the Capitol.
Civil Lawsuit Against Select Committee
The former chief of staff filed the civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington and asked the court to invalidate two of the select committee's subpoenas issued to Meadows and Verizon, the carrier for his prior personal mobile phone. Additionally, the lawsuit called the subpoenas "overly broad and unduly burdensome."
Meadows' 43-page complaint also notes that former President Trump told the official in early October not to comply with the subpoena that sought his documents and testimony, saying they were covered by executive privilege. However, President Joe Biden had waived Trump's privilege claims, forcing the Republican businessman to file his own lawsuit against the select committee's Jan. 6 investigations, CNBC reported.
In the civil lawsuit, the former chief of staff's attorneys wrote that if Meadows did comply with the select committee's subpoenas, he would be "illegally coerced into violating the Constitution." The official's lawyers said that the House Select Committee was wrongly seeking to have both Meadows and Verizon provide information to the committee that lacks authority to seek and obtain.
Meadows' lawyers allege that the House Select Committee's subpoenas were violating "long-standing principles of executive privilege and immunity." Due to the legal disputes between Biden and Trump regarding executive privilege, the former chief of staff said he was put in the "untenable position of choosing between conflicting privilege claims."
Turned-Over Documents
However, courts have also denied former President Trump's requests for injunctions against the National Archives to prevent the release of records from the Trump White House. Just last week, Meadows agreed to sit for a deposition before the panel of lawmakers. But on Tuesday, the former chief of staff reversed course after already turning over thousands of pages of documents, including text messages, The Daily Beast reported.
The turned-over documents include emails that showed Meadows, as early as Nov. 7, 2020, talking about a plot for Republican-controlled states to send "alternate" slates of presidential electors to Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Additionally, the former chief of staff texted one member of Congress regarding the idea, saying, "I love it."
In a Dec. 7 letter, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson told Meadows' lawyer, George Terwilliger, that the House Select Committee had no other choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend the former chief of staff be referred for criminal justice prosecution.
The House Select Committee was already in possession of text messages from Meadows' personal mobile phone. One text message in January 2021 was between Meadows and an organizer of the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse. The documents also included text messages talking about the need for former President Trump to issue a public statement that may have prevented the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Business Insider reported.
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