Trump chief of staff sues ‘unconstitutional’ Capitol riots investigative committee

Investigative committee is overstepping its authority by trying to obtain his phone records from day of the riot, Meadows said.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Mark Meadows, who served as former president Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, sued the congressional committee investigating the January 2021 Capitol riot, charging that the body is overstepping its authority.

Meadows filed a lawsuit with a federal court which called for a subpoenas meant to force him to testify in front of the committee, along with a subpoena for his phone records, to be blocked.

The “two overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas from the committee issued in whole or part without legal authority and in violation of the Constitution” should not be considered binding or legally valid, he wrote in his lawsuit.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Meadows said he believed the committee is not actually interested in developing a clear timeline about the course of events that day.

Rather, he said, they are scrambling to find any substantive proof that Trump and other Republican officials were responsible for the riot. He added that breaking with previous precedent around “judiciously” issuing subpoenas, the Congressional committee was dishing them out with abandon.

“[T]hey are doing a fishing expedition,” he told Fox News. “It’s broadly believed that they’ve issued more subpoenas in the last two months than they have in the last decade.”

Even if the committee succeeds in obtaining his phone records, Meadows emphasized, they will not find evidence of wrongdoing on his part or that could be attributed to Trump.

“I can tell you, because certain non-privileged communications, I think what they will find is that no one in the White House had any advance knowledge of anything that was going to happen on that [January 6] in terms of a breach of security,” he said.

“I can also tell you that… President Trump not only authorized but encouraged the authorization of 10,000 National Guard leading up to that. That’s not something that you do if you’re anticipating, you know, some kind of nefarious motive.”

So far, Meadows has refused to testify in front of the committee, triggering threats that he could be found in criminal contempt.

Capitol riotDonald TrumpUS Capitol