San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FILING: MEADOWS WAS TOLD VIOLENCE POSSIBLE
Documents outline GOP strategizing to overturn election
In advance of Jan. 6, 2021, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was warned about the threat of violence that day as supporters of President Donald Trump planned to mass on the Capitol, according to new testimony released late on Friday by the House committee investigating the insurrection.
One of Meadows’ top aides, Cassidy Hutchinson, told congressional investigators that she recalled Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who also held the role of a political adviser at the White House, “coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”
Hutchinson added that, “I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information internally.”
The new details came in a filing arguing that a federal court should reject Meadows’ claims of executive privilege and compel him to appear before the House Jan. 6 committee, which is continuing to build a case that Trump knowingly misled his followers about the election, and pressured Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault.
In the motion, the committee outlines seven “discrete categories of information” it seeks to question Meadows about and argued that his claims of executive privilege should not preclude him from testifying about these categories.
Those categories include testimony and documents relating to communications with members of Congress; the plan to replace acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark; efforts by Trump to “direct, persuade or pressure then-vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th”; and activity in the White House “immediately before and during the events of January 6th.”
The committee laid out new examples of warnings Meadows received ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, along with a deepened understanding of his involvement with planning and coordinating efforts to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in Congress.
Investigators also have found evidence that Meadows repeatedly communicated with GOP Reps. Scott Perry, R-PA., and Jim Jordan, R-ohio, before and on Jan. 6, 2021. Hutchinson identified Perry, Jordan, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA., and Lauren Boebert, R-colo., as the leading proponents in Congress “who were raising the idea of the Vice President doing anything other than just counting electoral votes on January the 6th.”
Asked by investigators if Perry supported the idea of sending people to the U.S. Capitol on that day, Hutchinson replied that he did but that members present on a planning call ahead of Jan. 6 were “more inclined to go with White House guidance.”