Trump's Former Chief Of Staff Refuses To Cooperate With January 6th Committee

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's former and final Chief of Staff, announced this week that he will NOT be complying with subpoenas from the January 6th Select Committee. Meadows, via his lawyers, said that they are going to wait for the courts to resolve the issue of executive privilege, even though the courts have made it pretty clear so far that executive privilege can only be invoked by the person currently serving as the President, and that person today is Joe Biden. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's former chief of staff and the chief of staff during the January 6th insurrection, let the January 6th committee know this week that he would not be complying with their subpoenas because he wants to wait and see how this whole legal argument over executive privilege plays out. He also in a letter, said that Joe Biden was not doing enough to protect the prerogatives of the executive branch. And he said it was because of this, that Meadows would not be cooperating unless forced to do so. You know, I have routinely said that I feel like there's a reason current presidents never really go after past presidents. And part of that is sure it's a big club and you ain't in it. But I think there is just this general understanding between administrations that look, we probably did some screwed up things. You're going to do some screw up things.

You don't come after me. The next guy won't go after you. Everybody's fine. Just let it be. Because for all the talk from Donald Trump, oh, Obama did all these illegal things. He never actually did anything. For all of the illegal things that we know that George W. Bush did, Obama said, eh, I'm not going to touch it. For all the attacks on Bill Clinton, George W. Bush was like, yeah, we're just going to ignore all that. And that's what Mark Meadows was assuming, I believe, Joe Biden was going to do, he was going to follow in that tradition of just being like, eh, don't worry about it. But Biden didn't. This might be one of the best things Biden did. And that's what Mark Meadows off. He's like, hold on. You know, I thought there was kind of this whole agreement thing that you don't come after us and the next guy's not gonna come after you. Well, that's not how it works, Mark. And if you're waiting for the courts to give you their answer on executive privilege, um, they've pretty much already done that.

I know it's being appealed, but that appeal is going to go nowhere. The judge's ruling this week was sound, judge Tanya Chutkan, absolutely nailed it. Presidents are not Kings and you are not the president. The guy who is the president, said he's not invoking executive privilege. Therefore executive privilege does not exist for these documents, hand them over. But Meadows wants to play coy. He wants to be like, ah, I just want to see what's going to happen here and see if I need to do this. Well, you do, you have to. And in the meantime, if you're not going to comply with the subpoenas, the House needs to go ahead and vote to hold you in contempt so that the DOJ can do absolutely nothing about it because that's, what's going to happen. Don't believe me? Ask Steve Bannon. Ask him if he's been arrested yet. No, he hasn't and that's why you've got more and more people on the left calling from Merrick Garland to be fired because he's not doing anything. The House voted for these contempt charges against Steve Bannon.

And then turns them over to the DOJ and says, all right, you got to do your thing. You got prosecute. And the DOJ has done nothing. And I think that's the other part of what Mark Meadows sees. First, he wants that executive privilege, but second, he says, okay, but if I don't comply with the subpoena, what are they going to do? They didn't do anything to Bannon. So what risk is there to me? Nobody's getting punished for any of this.