Former Trump aide cooperating with House Jan. 6 panel

Associated Press

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s erstwhile main of staff, is cooperating with a House sheet investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and providing immoderate documents, putting disconnected for present the panel’s menace to clasp him successful contempt, the committee’s president said Tuesday.

But the sheet “will proceed to measure his grade of compliance,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson said successful a statement.

The statement comes aft 2 months of negotiations betwixt Meadows and the committee and aft the Justice Department indicted longtime Trump state Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena.

Thompson said Meadows has produced records and volition soon look for an archetypal deposition.

“The Select Committee expects each witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to supply each accusation requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive,” Thompson said.

Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger, said helium was continuing to enactment with the committee and its unit connected a “potential accommodation” that would not necessitate Meadows to waive enforcement privilege nor “forfeit the long-standing presumption that elder White House aides cannot beryllium compelled to attest earlier Congress,” arsenic Trump has argued.

“We admit the Select Committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses connected non-privileged topics,” Terwilliger said successful a statement.

The tentative statement with Meadows highlights the committee’s efforts to equilibrium its request for accusation astir Trump’s relation successful the convulsive insurrection with the erstwhile president’s assertions — including successful an ongoing tribunal lawsuit — that Congress cannot get accusation astir his backstage conversations with apical aides astatine the time.

While the committee has rejected Trump’s arguments and President Joe Biden has waived the privilege arsenic the existent executive, the sheet wants to determination rapidly and debar lengthy ineligible entanglements, if possible, that could hold the investigation.

Terwilliger had antecedently made wide that Meadows wouldn’t comply with the panel’s September subpoena due to the fact that of Trump’s enforcement privilege claims. The committee rejected those arguments, particularly aft the White House said that Biden would waive immoderate privilege implicit Meadows’ interrogation and arsenic courts changeable down Trump’s efforts to halt the committee from gathering information.

The House sheet argued that it has questions for Meadows that bash not straight impact conversations with Trump and couldn’t beryllium blocked by privilege claims.

In the committee’s subpoena, Thompson cited Meadows’ efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 predetermination decision and his unit connected authorities officials to propulsion the erstwhile president’s mendacious claims of wide elector fraud.

The committee has scheduled a ballot for Wednesday to prosecute contempt charges against a abstracted witness, erstwhile Justice Department authoritative Jeffrey Clark, aft helium appeared for a deposition and declined to reply questions.