Posts tagged with "Mark Meadows"

Above, former President Donald Trump and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. (Photo source: Agence-France Presse/CNN)

‘Decisions are imminent’: Georgia prosecutor nears charging decisions in Trump probe

January 26, 2023

The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election indicated on Tuesday, January 24, that decisions on whether to seek the indictment of the former president or his associates were “imminent,” reports Politico.

“Decisions are imminent,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said during a Tuesday court hearing called by the Georgia trial court judge overseeing the “special purpose grand jury” that Willis has used to gather evidence over the last year.

Willis’ remark came as she urged the superior court judge, Robert McBurney, to oppose calls to publicly release the findings of her yearlong probe, which she conducted alongside the special grand jury to examine Trump and his inner circle.

Willis has spent the last year investigating Trump’s and his allies’ effort to reverse the election results in Georgia, despite losing the state by more than 11,000 votes.

The special grand jury probed Trump’s January 2 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—asking him to “find” just enough votes to put him ahead of Joe Biden in the state.

And it pursued evidence about Trump’s broader national effort to subvert the election, calling top allies like his White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney John Eastman, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

The special grand jury concluded its investigation earlier this month, dissolving in early January, and recommended that its findings be released publicly. McBurney then called for a hearing to discuss whether to follow the panel’s recommendation or maintain the secrecy of the report. Willis told the judge that making the report public could jeopardize impending prosecutions.

“In this case, the state understands the media’s inquiry and the world’s interest. But we have to be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights,” Willis said, emphasizing that multiple people could face charges.

Tuesday’s discussion was the result of Georgia’s unusual grand jury law, which permits prosecutors to impanel a “special purpose grand jury” that has no power to make formal indictments but can help prosecutors gather evidence about a specific topic. If Willis opts to pursue charges against Trump or others, she needs to present her evidence to a traditional grand jury, which could then issue indictments.

Thomas Clyde, an attorney representing several media outlets supporting the release of the report, urged McBurney to side with the grand jurors rather than Willis.

“We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety,” Clyde said.

He noted that findings in criminal investigations are often released publicly even while investigations and grand jury proceedings continue.

McBurney noted that Willis’ probe has been accompanied by an extraordinary release of information and evidence by the House January 6 select committee and from witnesses being called before a federal grand jury probing the same matters, none of which had derailed Willis’ probe. He also noted that there was little to stop individual grand jurors from simply telling others about the findings in their report.

But McBurney said he wanted more time to consider the arguments and said any ruling he made would provide significant advance notice before the potential release of the report.

Research contact: @politico

Image source: Shoshana Gordon for Axios

Top Trump-aligned conservative group buys up prime D.C. office space

January 19, 2023

An influential conservative nonprofit led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is buying up millions of dollars’ worth of office space on Capitol Hill, records show, according to a report by Axios.

The Conservative Partnership Institute, as the nonprofit is called, is the backbone of a policy and advocacy apparatus aligned with hard-right legislators such as Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia).

Indeed, Axios says, the real-estate purchases are a sign of the conservative nonprofit’s growing clout—and grandiose plans—as it tries to steer the direction of Republicans’ new House majority and prepare for the next GOP administration.

Just this month, several right-wing lawmakers who opposed Representative Kevin McCarthy’s (R-California) bid for speakership —including Gaetz, and Representatives Byron Donalds (R-Florida), Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) and Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) — met at the CPI offices, according to Yahoo News.

CPI completed its most recent purchase early this month: $11.35 million for new space on Pennsylvania Avenue, adjacent to both the Capitol and CPI’s headquarters on Independence Avenue, D.C. property records show.

That followed multiple purchases last year on Pennsylvania Avenue—and ones on nearby 3rd Street SE and C Street SE—each made in the name of a different LLC.

Also last year, CPI paid more than $7 million for a 14,000-square-foot lodge on more than 2,000 acres near the Maryland shore, according to property records.

Led by Meadows and ex-Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), CPI has incubated or financially supported a number of allied organizations. Many are run by Trump Administration alumni and considered integral to early planning for another potential Trump presidency.

Founded in 2017, CPI has grown substantially in recent years. Its operating budget shot up from $7.1 million in 2020 to more than $45 million the following year, tax records show.

CPI leases some of its office space to the House Freedom Caucus’ political arms — the House Freedom Fund and House Freedom Action, Federal Election Commission records show. Staffers for HFC members and other conservative legislators routinely travel to CPI’s Maryland property—where the group hosts training sessions on topics ranging from communications to congressional procedure to investigative tactics.

CPI’s offices are designed not just as venues for political strategy and advocacy, but also as places where conservatives can find—in its words—”a sense of community.”

In its 2021 annual report, the group says, “Within our historic building and adjacent properties—just a half mile from the U.S. Capitol—conservatives learn how to resist the lure of the Establishment and be effective in Washington.”

Research contact: @axios

Above, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.l (Photo source: GQ)

Meadows was central to hundreds of texts about overturning 2020 election, book says

September 28, 2022

The texts included previously unreported messages—including a group chat with Trump administration cabinet officials and plans to object to Joe Biden’s election certification on January 6 by Republican members of Congress and one former US attorney, as well as other Trump allies.

The book, “The Breach” by former Congressman Denver Riggleman, was obtained by The Guardian in advance of its scheduled publication on Tuesday, September 27. The 288-page tome, published by Henry Holt and Co., already has become controversial after being condemned by the panel as “unauthorized.”

Although most of the texts sent to and from Meadows that Riggleman includes in the book have been public for months, his text offers new insight into and fills some gaps about how all three branches of government were seemingly involved in strategizing ways to obstruct the congressional certification on January 6, 2021.

Less than an hour after the election was called for Biden, for instance, Rick Perry, Trump’s former energy secretary, texted a group chat that included Meadows; then-housing secretary, Ben Carson; and former agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, all concluding that Trump should dispute the call.

“POTUS line should be: Biden says hes [sic] president. America will see what big data says,” Perry wrote. “This sets the stage for what we’re about to prove.” While Carson was more cautious, Perdue appeared unconcerned about seeing concrete proof of election fraud. “No quit!” he wrote.

The former president’s final White House chief of staff also fielded a text from the Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, who forwarded a note from North Dakota’s then-U.S. attorney, Drew Wrigley, who offered his own advice for overturning the results because “Trump’s legal team has made a joke of this whole thing.”

“Demand statewide recount of absentee/mail-in ballots in line with pre-existing state law with regard to signature comparisons,” Wrigley wrote. “If state officials refuse that recount, the legislature would then act under the Constitution, selecting the slate of electors.”

The suggestion from Wrigley echoed what the Trump legal team would ultimately pursue in having fake electors sent to Congress on January 6 to have the then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win—a scheme now part of a criminal investigation by the US attorney in Washington, D.C.

The text from Wrigley is significant since the Justice Department is supposed to remain above the political fray. Wrigley’s note appears to mark an instance of a federal prosecutor endorsing a legally dubious scheme when there was no fraud sufficient to alter the outcome of the 2020 election.

A DOJ spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment. Wrigley, now the North Dakota state attorney general, also could not be immediately reached for comment.

Texts to Meadows also show Republican lawmakers started to finalize objections to the certification of the 2020 election only hours after Trump sent a tweet about a “big protest” that the House January 6 committee has said mobilized far-right groups to make preparations to storm the Capitol.

The former president sent the pivotal tweet in the early hours of December 19, 2020. The panel previously described it as the catalyst that triggered the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, as well as “Stop the Steal” activists, to target obstructing the certification.

But the tweet also coincided with efforts by Republican lawmakers to finalize objections to the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, new texts from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters on Capitol Hill sent to Meadows show.

Hours after Trump sent his tweet, according to texts published in the book, the Republican congressman Jody Hi ce messaged Meadows to say he would be “leading” his state’s “electoral college objection on Jan 6”—days before Trump is known to have met with Republicans at the White House to discuss it.

The congressman also told Meadows that Trump “spoke” with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican who had been elected to a House seat in Georgia but had yet to be sworn in, and was interested in meeting with the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Hice’s messages to Meadows came at a critical juncture: It was the Saturday after a contentious Friday meeting at the White House, where Trump entertained seizing voting machines and installing a conspiracy theorist lawyer, Sidney Powell, as special counsel to investigate election fraud.

The meeting to discuss objecting to Biden’s win on January 6 was originally scheduled for the next Monday, December 21, 2020, but it was rescheduled to take place on the next Tuesday, according to the book, citing additional messages sent by the Republican congressman Brian Babin.

Nine days after the meeting with Trump, the Republican members of Congress seemed to finish their objection plans, and Babin texted Meadows to say the “objectors” would be having an additional strategy session at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which played host to other January 6 efforts.

The timing of the new texts to Meadows raised the prospect that Trump’s tweet moved ahead several plans that worked in concert, with the Republican objections about supposed fraud giving Pence a pretext to throw out Biden votes as rioters obstructed proceedings.

Research contact: @guardian

Above, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), who heads the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. (Photo source: House.gov)

January 6 committee’s Thompson: ‘No choice’ but to seek contempt charges against Meadows

December 9, 2021

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol plans to move forward with contempt proceedings against former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for his decision not to cooperate with the panel’s requests, reports NBC News.

Representative Bennie Thompson ( D-Mississippi), the chairman of the committee, wrote in a letter to Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger III, on Tuesday night, December 7, that the committee “is left with no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.”

The committee was scheduled to hold a deposition with Meadows on Wednesday, December 8, but he was not expected to show up. Before serving in the Trump White House, Meadows served in the House from 2013 until March 2020.

Thompson said there is “no legitimate basis” for Meadows’ refusal to cooperate with the committee and answer questions about the documents he had already provided to lawmakers. The chairman said those include “a text message exchange with a member of Congress apparently about appointing alternate electors in certain states as part of a plan that the member acknowledged would be ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows apparently said, ‘I love it.’”

“They also feature a text exchange in January 2021 between Meadows and an organizer of the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the White House Ellips; as well as text messages about the need for former President Donald Trump to issue a public statement that could have stopped the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” Thompson wrote.

Thompson said his committee has repeatedly tried to identify the areas of inquiry that Meadows believes are protected by executive privilege, but neither Terwilliger nor Meadows have “meaningfully provided that information.”Hi

He added that he had given Meadows opportunities to comply with the committee and questioned how the former White House chief of staff could produce documents–but then decide not to appear for a deposition to answer questions about them.

Thompson also questioned how Meadows released a new book in which he wrote about January 6, but is “denying a congressional committee the opportunity to ask him about the attack on our Capitol.” That “marks an historic and aggressive defiance of Congress,” Thompson wrote.

The letter came after Meadows said earlier Tuesday that he would no longer cooperate with the committee, which prompted the panel to threaten contempt proceedings.

Research contact: @NBCNews

President Donald Trump with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (immediately to right of POTUS) and other aides on way to photo op. (Photo source: Talking Points memo)