The Justice Department has declined to charge former Trump White House officials Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for refusing to cooperate with the House Select Committee’s investigation.
In two separate instances, the House voted to hold Meadows and Scavino in contempt for refusing to testify in front of the committee and recommended to the Justice Department that they be prosecuted.
The Washington Examiner reports:
“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral against Messrs. Meadows and Scavino,” Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to the House, according to the New York Times. “My office’s review of each of the contempt referrals arising from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation is complete.”
George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Meadows, told the news outlet, “The result speaks for itself.”
“While today’s indictment of Peter Navarro was the correct decision by the Justice Department, we find the decision to reward Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling,” Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) said in a statement Friday evening.
“Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino unquestionably have relevant knowledge about President Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events of January 6th,” they added. “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. If the Department’s position is that either or both of these men have absolute immunity from appearing before Congress because of their former positions in the Trump Administration, that question is the focus of pending litigation. As the Select Committee has argued in District Court, Mark Meadows’s claim that he is entitled to absolute immunity is not correct or justified based on the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda. No one is above the law.”
Meadows previously handed over thousands of pages of documents to the panel however he refused to testify in front of the panel because he claimed he would be forced to divulge privileged information. The panel has argued Meadows was not protected by executive privilege.
