House urges judge to uphold Jan. 6 subpoena to top Trump aide Meadows
Attorneys for the House on Wednesday urged a federal judge to uphold the authority of Congress and reject a bid by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to quash a subpoena from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
House general counsel Douglas N. Letter implored U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of D.C. not to allow the former top aide to President Donald Trump to rebuff lawmakers’ demand for his testimony and records, and instead to issue a potentially landmark ruling saying top presidential advisers do not enjoy “absolute immunity” from compelled testimony once the presidents they serve leave office.
Meadows, a key Trump adviser in the weeks leading up to and on the day of the violent Capitol siege by angry Trump supporters, filed a lawsuit in December to toss out a May 2021 subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, with which he partially complied by turning over thousands of documents including emails and text messages before ending his cooperation and being voted in contempt by the House.
At a two-hour hearing, Nichols, a 2019 Trump appointee, said he was “frustrated, to be honest” that the House did not ask him to dismiss Meadows’s lawsuit outright by citing the Constitution’s speech or debate clause – which prohibits lawsuits against lawmakers conducting Congress’s legitimate legislative functions – but instead asked him to make a more expansive and potentially impactful ruling about the extent of former top White House advisers’ immunity.
During the hearing, Meadows attorney George Terwilliger Jr. said his client also sought to continue the lawsuit because it raised important legal issues that have not been resolved, even though the Justice Department has declined to prosecute Meadows for contempt of Congress and the court in this case cannot order him to testify.
Nichols said he would rule “appropriately quickly.” The House subpoena will expire in January if Republicans prevail in November’s elections.
“Do you think that absolute immunity – even assuming it applies to former chiefs of staff to former presidents – would apply to nongovernmental communications?” Nichols pressed Terwilliger at one point, yielding a glimpse into his thinking.
Yes, Terwilliger replied, arguing that “the purpose of immunity is to protect the [office of] the presidency” from congressional interference under the Constitution’s separation of powers and that top White House aides must enjoy the same absolute protection as the president.
House lawmakers have cast Meadows as one of the shrinking number of top Trump White House aides who have not fully cooperated, and suggested that few have as intimate insight into the former president’s actions during the effort to overturn the election results in his presidency’s final weeks. In televised hearings this summer and a promised forthcoming public report, the committee has probed Trump’s pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence; moves by his lawyers and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won; and planning for the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack.
Letter said the information that the House sought from Meadows had little do with the president’s official responsibilities of managing the executive branch or conducting foreign and military affairs, but rather concerned Trump’s unofficial and personal desire to remain in office for a second term.