Mark Meadows led 'malicious and depraved' coverup as Trump rioters sacked the Capitol: columnist

The House select committee issued a report Sunday night recommending contempt charges for Mark Meadows that revealed a blueprint for a coup and the coverup to follow.

Donald Trump's allies -- including Meadows, his White House chief of staff -- were frantically covering up the former president's reaction to the Jan. 6 insurrection as the mob was attacking police and invading the U.S. Capitol, and Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent said the report shows some of the topics Meadows was afraid to testify about.

"We know from press accounts, such as this Post report, that Trump watched the violent assault unfold on TV and ignored many frantic pleas that he step in," Sargent wrote. "One Trump adviser told The Post that Trump was enjoying the spectacle of his followers fighting on his behalf."

READ MORE: Mark Meadows conspired with a lawmaker to send bogus Trump electors to Congress

That runs contrary to Meadows' recently published book, which ludicrously claims Trump was "mortified" by the mob violence, and contradicts reporting that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called the former president as rioters tried to break into his office and begged him to call them off.

"Could it be that Meadows does not want to confirm these reports that Trump enjoyed the spectacle of the mob threatening extreme violence to lawmakers who were in process of making his loss official, and that Trump even treated their cause as a just one?" Sargent wrote.

"If so, it would of course make Meadows’s book account appear even more laughably dishonest," Sargent added. "This also hints at what Meadows may be concealing from the committee investigating the worst outbreak of U.S. political violence in modern times, thus showing how malicious and depraved the coverup on Trump’s behalf has become."