Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin both have testified to the DOJ on a number of matters, from the Jan. 6 attacks to the stolen White House documents scandal. They've also spoken publicly to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 election overthrow attempt and the violence.
Speaking about the Meadows news, former deputy assistant attorney general, Harry Litman, was asked by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace if he thought Philbin and Cipollone will go deeper into what they knew than they did in the Jan. 6 hearings.
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"Yeah, farther really all the way to the absolute sort of holly grail," characterized Litman. "Cipollone and Philbin repeatedly told Trump what he was planning was unlawful. 'What did he say when you told him that?' And the response to date has been, 'I can't talk because of executive privilege.' But that executive privilege claim is dubious, and the holding that [Washington D.C. District Court Judge Beryl] Howell made about the vice president's staff indicates it."
Litman said that things might be different for the president's staff, but all they'd have to do is waive the executive privilege from the current president. Biden has already done that with all Jan. 6 and election-related cases.
There is a Brett Kavanaugh opinion, however, that says Biden's waiver might not be enough. Meanwhile, there is what South Carolina said about Meadows, saying that they need evidence to demand Meadows. Given the recordings, however, that isn't likely to be difficult.
"They are really close in a sort of movement on two sides to getting the most important evidence that has been withheld to date, namely just what Trump said when he was told things were unlawful or what he said about Mike Pence, everything he said on Jan. 6th, that would be the most vivid testimony of intent to date," said Litman.
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Litman also explained that these are the kinds of things that could get Mark Meadows in trouble, but it could ultimately give power to the prosecutors, who could offer immunity.
"How much trouble could Mark Meadows be in," Wallace asked Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, after playing the recording of Meadows.
"I think Mark Meadows can be in a lot of -- how would a prosecutor say it or -- there could be a lot of leverage used against him because Mark Meadows has essentially said in that call, a very polite and not as coarse version of what Trump said to [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger later, can you find me the X number thousands of votes? Come on Brad. And it's also a noncrass, noncoarse, potentially defensible version of what Donald Trump said to his deputy attorney general," said Leonnig.
She went on to quote the comments from the Deputy Attorney General where Trump demanded, "just say it's fraudulent down in Georgia. We'll take care of the rest."
Mary McCord, was the acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security from 2014 to 2016. Speaking to Wallace, she also agreed that prosecutors could use charges against Meadows as leverage.
"I think what she's looking at, among the various different election crimes that are potentially available in — under Georgia state law, which is the law she would be applying, you know, there's a potential there for a conspiracy and there's a potential that some of this evidence would lead to that," said McCord. "Now that, of course, would mean that there was -- is a decent likelihood, if that's true, that Mark Meadows will assert the Fifth Amendment and then we have the same issue there of a prosecutor in Georgia having to face issues like, do I offer immunity or do I rely on other evidence I can get elsewhere because I don't want to relinquish the opportunity to potentially prosecute Mark Meadows."
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Leverage against Mark Meadows 1
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leverage for Meadows 1
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