2/2 Meadows burned papers after meeting with Rep Scott Perry, who introduced the WH to DOJ appointee Jeffrey Bossert Clark. Clark agreed to push the big lie & Trump tried to replace acting AG Rosen with him when Rosen refused to say the election was tainted by fraud.
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 26, 2022
… Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked under Meadows when he was former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, told the panel investigating the Capitol attack that she saw Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). A person familiar with the testimony described it on condition of anonymity.
The Meadows-Perry meeting came in the weeks after Election Day 2020, as Trump and his allies searched for ways to reverse the election results.
It’s unclear whether Hutchinson told the committee which specific papers were burnt, and if federal records laws required the materials’ preservation. Meadows’ destruction of papers is a key focus for the select committee, and the person familiar with the testimony said investigators pressed Hutchinson for details about the issue for more than 90 minutes during a recent deposition…
Before the 2020 election, Perry — who represents the Harrisburg, Pa. region — had a relatively low national profile. But testimony and documents obtained by congressional investigators show he was the first person to connect Trump with Jeffrey Clark, a top Justice Department official who sympathized with the then-president’s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.
Senior Trump DOJ officials have testified that the former president came close to appointing Clark as acting attorney general in order to use the department’s extraordinary powers to sow doubt about the election results and urge state legislatures to consider overriding Biden’s victory.
Perry, now chair of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, spent weeks pressing Meadows to implement the plan…
The select committee has also revealed that Meadows and Perry took steps to conceal some of their communications after the election. For example, in a Dec. 2020 text message exchange the committee included in an April court filing, Perry told Meadows he had “just sent you something on Signal,” referring to the encrypted messaging app popular with journalists and government officials…
Earlier this month, the select panel also subpoenaed Perry and four other Republican lawmakers. Perry’s compliance deadline is today, and he hasn’t signaled whether or not he will cooperate. The select committee also subpoenaed Clark and later referred him to DOJ for prosecution, stating he had failed to comply with the subpoena. DOJ has not charged Clark with any crime…
Depending on if she can identify the papers, it sounds like good old fashioned obstruction of justice to me
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 26, 2022
https://twitter.com/edroso/status/1529529284804608000
https://twitter.com/LesserFrederick/status/1529531678011662340
NYTimes barely wanted to report on Meadows crimes too, last paragraph in the Trump Pence story today, "The committee has also gathered testimony that Mr. Meadows used the fireplace in his office to burn documents"
— Adam McGinnis (@adammcginnis) May 25, 2022
Instead, it has trained its resources on Meadows, Eastman and the RNC. All three face important inflection points this week.
The committee has also used the Meadows/Eastman cases to publicly reveal some of its most dramatic evidence. https://t.co/5mHOQAYC5D
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 26, 2022
Jerzy Russian
I guess Mr. Meadows did not have access to a shredder?
gene108
‘@Jerzey Russian: Fire should work better at getting rid of the evidence.
CaseyL
‘@Jerzy Russian @gene108: That is true: shredded papers can be put back together, with enough time and labor.
gene108
I do not, for the life of me, understand why Republicans have such a strong hold on so many voters that they are still competitive.
It’s one thing if they were merely ineffective, but they are knowingly malicious and harmful. They lied us into war in Iraq, crashed the economy, and took reckless stands against public health measures against COVID.
Plus, they fomented an insurrection against the U.S. government, because they lost an election.
I hear the arguments about single issue voting on guns and/or abortion or because of preserving white peoples place in the social pecking order, but at a very basic level I just can’t wrap my head around it, because Republicans actively make things worse for everybody.
Jackie
‘@CaseyL: They’ve become experts at taping documents – thanks to TFG. Meadows deliberately burned those papers so they couldn’t be salvaged.
kalakal
Mark ‘3 votes’ Meadows is not going to come out of this well. Sad
Shalimar
‘@gene108: most people don’t nurture grudges when they’re wronged like they should.
Jerzy Russian
Also too: the motion that Trump supported the potential hanging of Pence is bananas, well past the wearing-your-underpants-on-the-outside stage. As far as I know, no recent president has expressed a similar thing.
debbie
Did none of these people feel things were getting too crazy town and decide to bail?
I hope we’ve already got messaging to counter what the GOP will be hurling at the public. Resting on facts will be futile.
debbie
‘@ Jerzy Russian: It makes Pence’s winning support of Kemp over TFG’s Purdue loss more fun, I think.
scav
‘@gene108
Above all, they likely protect their self-esteem. They cannot think themselves as being wrong about something, anything. Reality itself warps around their needy fragile egos.
piratedan
‘@scav…. yeah, in their minds these people believe that they are patriots, saving the soul of the country for 2nd amendment Jesus and the natural order of things, i.e. where white dudes can screw who they like, be it socially, financially or in reality.
Another Scott
Speaking of lying liars who lie, …
Google tells me that the first police force in the USA was established in NYC in 1844. Maybe public safety would be better served by a new model. Too many people who apparently want to play soldier but aren’t qualified to be in the Army don’t seem able to do policing either.
Grr…,
Scott.
Kay
Another Scott May 26, 2022 at 9:59 PM
Sara Spector
@Miriam2626
·
1h
As an ex prosecutor from Uvalde, I can say based on my past interactions with Uvalde PD, you will never know the truth about what went down in that school until every inch of video tape is released to the press.
The school spent a bundle on “hardening” in 2017/18 so there should be video. Most schools have it now.
Jackie
‘@Another Scott: I saw that press conference and was sickened. Question not asked – 10 to 12 minutes between wreaking truck and first shots to shooter entering the school through a back door. WHY WASN’T THE SCHOOL PUT INTO LOCKDOWN MODE???
How much time is needed to initiate lockdown from first reported 911 calls of a shooter near a school?
This is becoming crazier by the hour.
HumboldtBlue
‘@Kay:
I saw that, and what about the missing 9-1-1 recordings that have suddenly disappeared? The police also can’t lie their way out of this, there are too many videos and too many reliable witnesses. That’s why the GOP is hell-bent on any distraction whatsoever.
In a perverse way, I wonder if this isn’t the first glaring example of police responding to protests about their behavior by refusing to provide the service they are trained and paid to do.
It’s all anecdotal, but stories about a lack of police response in places like Portland, for example, are appearing with more regularity.
Raoul Paste
So, I assume that the burning documents incident is not mentioned in the book that Mark Meadows has been hawking in recent weeks. I’d say his book tour is over
Edmund Dantes
I mean isn’t this a crime? Destroying government records. If he was in his office it had to be government work as you can’t do campaign work from the White House. I mean Al gore got in trouble for using the phone in the residence.
mrmoshpotato
““Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with a House Republican who was working to challenge the 2020 election, according to testimony the Jan. 6 select committee has heard from one of his former aides.””
Like a fucking Russian at their San Francisco consulate before being kicked out of the United States! (Aug/Sept 2017)
Sons of bitches.
Calouste
‘@jackie maybe the Texas police can get some training from the Toronto police, who today shot and killed a man seen walking around with a rifle close to an elementary school.
Betty
I am happy to see my Congressman finally get the attention he deserves. It will take a miracle to unseat him. It looks like a very progressive woman is running against him in a pretty conservative district.
PaulB
‘@gene108: “I do not, for the life of me, understand why Republicans have such a strong hold on so many voters that they are still competitive.”
It’s actually not that hard to understand, unfortunately. They live in a completely different “alternative facts” world. In their media environment, nothing you cite shows up.
Instead, in their world, Democrats are trying to take away their guns, force them into subservient slavery, replace them with illegal immigrants, destroy their jobs, destroy their health care, destroy the economy, massively increase their taxes so that illegal immigrants and the undeserving poor can have everything they want without having to work for it, and so on.
If you spend any time at all in the conservative media environment, particularly the popular blogs, you would not recognize the America that is portrayed there. It’s stunning just how disconnected from reality it all is.
I don’t know how to fix this.
Paul in KY
Will state that all DOD approved shredders turn the paper into a dust that cannot be put back together. Would hope that White House shredders worked the same way.
Would assume that an idiot like Meadows would not know this.
Paul in KY
Scott, in the military you usually have to order your troops to assault a defended position, with the threat of court martial, etc. if the orders are not obeyed. Police seem to have a better gig than grunts….
UncleEbeneezer
Former US Attorney and host of #SistersInLaw podcast Barb McQuade notes:
“And maybe DOJ has not charged Meadows (with Contempt) because they consider him a target for bigger crimes and not a witness.”
twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1489991893702303750