At this point, both press reports and the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol have publicized enough evidence to show that Donald Trump's former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was eyeball-deep in multiple plots to nullify the U.S. presidential election that would throw Trump from office. Meadows, a former House Republican—because of course he was— has clammed up about all of it, which only goes to emphasize how determined he is to dodge any consequences for betraying his country.
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Now a South Carolina judge is siding with Georgia investigators who want answers from Meadows about the calls Meadows and Trump made to Georgia officials asking them to "find" new votes for Trump that would erase Joe Biden's win of the state. Mark Meadows must appear for testimony in response to a Georgia subpoena, ruled South Carolina Judge Edward Miller. Meadows' testimony "is material and necessary to the investigation."
If this all sounds familiar, it's because Meadows has been trying to dodge his Georgia subpoena just as the Trump-toadying South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has been trying to dodge his own. Graham and Meadows have both portrayed testifying about their involvement in a possible criminal act as far too burdensome for someone of their stature—with Graham capping his own attempts to dodge investigation with a new, novel legal theory insisting that members of Congress are allowed to commit criminal acts due to the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause. Graham's lawyers have essentially argued that even if Graham called up Georgia elections to issue a bomb threat, it doesn't matter because of his protected rights to Speech and/or Debate.
This has widely been regarded by legal scholars as, to use the technical jargon, Completely Fking Wrong, but the Supreme Court justice whose spouse was an active member of the plot to overthrow the U.S. government has put a last-ditch stop to Graham's testimony so that the full Supreme Court can evaluate this "Senators can break the law whenever they want" theory.
Another top Trump confidant who fought bitterly to avoid testifying in the Georgia investigation, Rudy Giuliani, tried to duck out of answering questions by arguing that despite his recent trips to Europe, his health was simply far too precarious for him to manage to make it to Atlanta. It didn't work, and Rudy was obliged to show up. Rudy is a target of the Georgia investigation, however, so it's likely he used his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid providing the answers Georgia officials most wanted to hear.
Mark Meadows' arguments for not testifying have been pretty tame in comparison to Graham’s "I am above the law" and Rudy's "I am but a frail man who cannot possibly survive a journey on one of your modern aeroplanes." The Meadows version is basically "because I don't want to."
His insistence might have something to do with the extent of Meadows' efforts to help Trump dispute the election results, including an "unexpected" appearance in Georgia in December 2020, when he showed up to ask that he be allowed to watch a vote-auditing process being conducted to verify absentee ballot signatures.
Meadows wasn't an idle bystander here, either in Republican Party attempts to "find" new votes for Trump, or in Trump's organization of a violent mob bent on blocking the certification of his election loss by force. Meadows was on the ground, coming up with the rationales Trump could use to further his hoaxes.
Meadows "plans to appeal the ruling," reports CNN. But again, there's nothing of substance to really argue here. He's not going to get a ruling in his favor unless he manages to get up to his fellow crooks on the Supreme Court, and almost certainly not even then. Like Lindsey Graham and the others, he's just attempting to stonewall for as long as he possibly can.
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