Mark Meadows is the 'single most important witness' — on multiple federal cases: legal expert
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified to a grand jury in the federal investigations of Donald Trump, according to a bombshell report on Tuesday. He could reportedly be a very important witness.
Speaking to CNN, legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig outlined just how valuable a witness Meadows is, in not one but both of the federal investigations into the former president.
"Pretty big win for the special counsel, Jack Smith, to secure the testimony of Mark Meadows," said anchor Jake Tapper.
"Yeah, Jake, this is significant in a few respects," said Honig. "First of all, Mark Meadows was one of the last remaining major witnesses who we knew was outstanding, who, until this point, we did not know had testified. Now he has testified. If it's in a grand jury, he has testified under oath. He obviously was very close to Donald Trump throughout the lead-up to and during January 6th. I think he's the single most important witness as to January 6th and, as you said, he would have relevant information, potentially, as well about the retention of sensitive or classified documents that underlies the Mar-a-Lago examination and investigation. So Mark Meadows is a crucial witness on both of the matters that the special counsel has before him right now."
"I personally, as a journalist, have a lot of questions for him about these conversations," said Tapper. "One of the questions is, what exactly did he convey to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, if anything, leading up to that time? There's talk of them reaching out to Meadows and Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who are the individuals that have the relationships with those far-right paramilitary groups."
"I think that's the issue with Mark Meadows: he seems to have been a fulcrum of communications," said Honig. "Everything went through him, and Meadows did cooperate briefly with the January 6th Committee and turned over those hundreds or thousands of very revealing text messages where we saw members of Congress and members of Donald Trump's family and White House advisers reaching out to him saying, you've got to do something, you have to get him to do something. Now Mark Meadows then suddenly hit a wall and basically said, I'm not cooperating then, and he was held in contempt by the January 6th Committee, although DOJ declined to prosecute him."
"One big question I have about the testimony that we're now learning Mark Meadows gave is, under what conditions did he give that testimony?" Honig added. "We know that he raised an executive privilege objection, basically saying, I can't testify about these confidential communications with the president, but he lost that fight. He and Donald Trump lost that fight in court. I wonder whether Mark Meadows took the Fifth and had to be given immunity in order to testify, and it's really important to know, did he have any agreement in place with prosecutors that underlied his testimony?"
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