Did Chief of Stuff Mark Meadows really secret the now-missing 10-inch highly-classified binder on Russian 2016 election interference out of the White House, as his assistant Cassidy Hutchinson alleged in her memoir? He and his cronies had been frantically redacting it to exonerate Agent Orange in the hours before Biden took office. It would be a shame if the not-so-exonerating bits got into the wrong hands, apparently.
Never fear, Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger — he of the GW Bush legal team during the Florida 2000 election non-recount — assures us Meadows would never do that. Let’s parse the statement he just gave to CNN.
Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong.
Sounds pretty definitive. Except the first part doesn’t say Meadows adhered to handling requirements for all classified material. Oh, and the second part — the part about “any such material” being handled accordingly — may well refer to just the classified documents he handled appropriately. Not to anything he may have stashed under his mattress.
Okay, how about the statement that Meadows isn’t responsible for any missing binder? Well, he didn’t write those 10 inches of documents, did he?
Lest anyone out there still confused enough to support democracy dare point out this is actually a nondenial, Terwilliger offers a parting shot.
Anyone and any entity suggesting that he is responsible for anything missing does not have facts and should exercise great care before making false allegations.
Ah, yes, there are some facts we don’t have. What color were Mark’s socks when he stole allegedly stole the binder, for example? We don’t have that fact, do we?
If Mr. Mark did take home the naughty binder, he may well have done his ex-boss an indirect service and protected the intelligence community by burning it. The point is that these players are enmeshed in a power movement so dependent on grift that they just can’t bring themselves to act in the public interest or speak plainly about what they’ve done.