Mark Meadows could be facing legal jeopardy over his phone records regardless of what turns up.
The former White House chief of staff is refusing to turn over some personal emails, text messages and encrypted chats by arguing Donald Trump still maintains executive privilege over those communications, but the House select committee believes those should have already been turned over to the National Archives, reported The Daily Beast.
“It appears that Mr. Meadows may not have complied with legal requirements to retain or archive documents under the Presidential Records Act,” the panel said in its report, which noted concerns that some of those materials may already be lost.
Congressional investigators are especially interested in the former presidential staffer's use of personal devices to coordinate challenges to Trump's election loss, including a Jan. 2 phone call to Georgia's secretary of state that's under criminal investigation in that state and the Jan. 6 protest that turned into the U.S. Capitol riot.
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“Had Mr. Meadows been deposed under oath, the committee would have asked him about his handling official government records, a topic that is not subject to any conceivable legal privilege,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) said during the contempt vote meeting.
Congress will vote Tuesday whether to hold Meadows in contempt, but investigators will likely look at whether he violated federal records laws.
“Mr. Meadows’ production of documents shows that he used the Gmail accounts and his personal cellular phone for official business related to his service as White House chief of staff,” the committee said in its latest report. “Given that fact, we would ask Mr. Meadows about his efforts to preserve those documents and provide them to the National Archives.”
It should not matter who paid for Meadows' phone service, according to a former national archivist.
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Don W. Wilson, who served as the nation’s archivist from 1987 until 1993, told The Daily Beast that there’s little wiggle room here.
“If it’s official business, then it’s a record," said Don W. Wilson, who served as the nation’s archivist from 1987 until 1993, "and by the nature of his role and his office, there’s not much unofficial. He shouldn’t have been using his personal cellphone… and if he was, there should have been some sort of transfer to the National Archives.”
Wilson believes Meadows' reluctance to turning over the communications should be a red flag in itself.
“What were the texts? What were the phone calls? If they can’t even get the logs for the official phone calls, that’s pretty revealing,” he said. “It’s going to come out eventually. But what it’s doing to the country right now is a travesty.”
