Mark Meadows used his own cellphone, 2 personal Gmail accounts, and Signal for official White House business, January 6 committee says

Authored by businessinsider.com and submitted by Minneapolitanian
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Meadows used his own cellphone, two personal Gmail accounts, and Signal for government business.

That's according to a report released Sunday by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.

The committee is expected to vote on Monday to hold Meadows in contempt for defying its subpoena.

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Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump's final chief of staff, used a personal cellphone, two personal Gmail accounts, and a Signal account for official government business, a report released on Sunday by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot said.

The committee released a 51-page report detailing why it should hold Meadows in criminal contempt for defying its subpoena and cited a slew of documents Meadows turned over to the panel when he was cooperating with the inquiry. The bipartisan committee is expected to vote on the contempt charge on Monday night.

The panel wrote that Meadows, who served as chief of staff from March 2020 to the end of Trump's term, used his own cellphone and two personal email accounts to communicate about "official business related to his service as White House chief of staff." He also sent messages through Signal, an encrypted-messaging app, the report said.

Government officials are required to use government-issued accounts and devices to communicate about their work or forward any private messages to their government accounts for public transparency and accountability purposes.

Meadows wouldn't be the only powerful Trump administration official to appear to violate these rules. Several top Trump White House officials were found to have used their personal accounts and devices to communicate about government business. And first lady Melania Trump also used private email accounts to conduct government business, her former advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told The Washington Post.

Meadows' and other Trump officials' private communications are particularly notable given the former president's aggressive campaign against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

"We would ask Mr. Meadows about his efforts to preserve those documents and provide them to the National Archives, as required by the Presidential Records Act," the committee wrote.

Meadows provided emails and text messages, the committee said, showing how integral he was in Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The committee said it wanted to question Meadows about his communications and actions surrounding the Capitol attack.

In one January 5 email, Meadows said the National Guard would be stationed at the Capitol the next day to "protect pro Trump people" attending the planned rally protesting the election's outcome, according to the committee.

Meadows published a book, "The Chief's Chief," earlier this month detailing his time in the White House and promoting a slew of unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, which he said was stolen by Democrats through widespread voter fraud. After briefly cooperating with the House committee, the former Republican congressman from North Carolina abruptly changed course last week and refused to be deposed by the panel.

"Mr. Meadows has shown his willingness to talk about issues related to the Select Committee's investigation across a variety of media platforms — anywhere, it seems, except to the Select Committee," the committee wrote in the report.

The House planned to vote on the resolution to hold Meadows in contempt — and thus subjecting him to prosecution by the Department of Justice — on Monday.

King_Mierdas on December 13rd, 2021 at 18:08 UTC »

The 3pg letter from the committee last night is super interesting (PDF warning).. Worth the read.

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IJ/IJ00/20211213/114313/HMTG-117-IJ00-20211213-SD012.pdf

danmathew on December 13rd, 2021 at 18:04 UTC »

Republicans wanted to put Hilary in prison for this.

ThisMachinePetsCats on December 13rd, 2021 at 17:40 UTC »

Weird, Republicans aren't chanting "LOCK HIM UP!"