Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer on Mark Meadows and obstruction (Dec. 14):
Here’s a question that might make Sen. Richard Burr smile: When will the North Carolina Republican Party censure Mark Meadows?
The answer, of course, is never. But that won’t hide the embarrassment that Meadows is for his party or for the state he represented in Congress for seven years. He left Congress in March of 2020 to become President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff.
The North Carolina Republican Party’s Central Committee voted unanimously to censure Burr for voting to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection. History may record that vote as Burr’s finest hour. Meanwhile, Meadows is emerging as a disgrace during a dangerous hour for U.S. democracy. Documents obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol show Meadows participated in Trump’s effort to throw out the result of a free and fair presidential election.
Meadows made a deal to cooperate with the congressional probe, but now is refusing to sit for a deposition, citing executive privilege. He also has sued to block the committee’s subpoenas against him as “overly broad and unduly burdensome.” He had turned over thousands of pages of documents to the committee, but is withholding some 1,000 text messages. The House panel voted Monday to recommend contempt charges.
In advance of the recommendation, the committee released a report Sunday that contained new details of Meadows’ actions related to attempts to overturn the election results. The report said Meadows “received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one member of Congress acknowledged was ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows responded, ‘I love it.’ ”
It’s also known that Meadows was on the phone when Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find“enough votes to reverse Trump’s Georgia loss. He also sought to have the Justice Department question the integrity of the election.
The Jan. 6 committee wants to hear about those machinations. Crucially, it wants Meadows’ version of what Trump was doing as the Capitol was under assault and how he responded to calls for help from Capitol security officials and members of Congress.
All this comes after Meadows’ history as a Tea Party firebrand and founding member of the obstructionist House Freedom Caucus. He played a key role in shutting down the federal government in 2013 in an effort to end funding for the Affordable Care Act.
In his new book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Meadows delivers a mostly air-brushed version of his time in the White House. He does reveal, though, that Trump tested positive for COVID-19 three days before a presidential debate with Joe Biden, and despite that, Trump went anyway. Meadows, who said a subsequent test of the former president came back negative, did not disclose the positive test, putting others, including the 77-year-old future president, at risk. Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 three days after the event.
For North Carolina, Meadows is more than a figure in a Washington drama. He is the embodiment of how the state’s turn to extreme gerrymandering has opened the way for reactionary and incompetent candidates to represent the state in Congress. Before Meadows, the 11th District was represented by a conservative Democrat, Heath Shuler, who retired after the district was redrawn to heavily favor Republicans. Now the district is represented by Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who has found a way to be more extreme and embarrassing than Meadows.
It has long been clear that Meadows is a Trump sycophant. Now the question is whether his eagerness to please included breaking the law. The Jan. 6 committee needs to take a hard line with the former chief of staff who never drew a line for Trump.